It looked like the end of the reel for cassettes. The last car to ship with a tape deck was the 2010 Lexus SC 430. Sony stopped making the Walkman last October. This can mean only one thing: Cassettes are about to be cool again. Indeed, upstart labels like Crash Symbols, Volar, and Bathetic are putting out cassette-only releases. Indie rock favorite the Mountain Goats recently came out with a tape of rarities, and established noise-pop bands Joan of Arc and Of Montreal are also putting out their new albums on cassette. One of the tape revival’s leading evangelists is LA electronic musician and cassette label owner Matthewdavid, who helps host a monthly party called Top Tape: “A strictly all-tapes night gives people a chance to share music and found sound that they wouldn’t get anywhere else.”

The cassette underground even has its first star—Clive Tanaka y Su Orquesta is the nom de music of a mysterious multi-instrumentalist/producer who began sending his tapes to blogs last year. Bloggers loved the tracks enough to rip and post them. Now Tanaka, who has gotten raves from the Chicago Tribune, has a label deal, a publicist, and a flock of fans lobbying Coachella to add Tanaka to its 2012 lineup. Michael Kenny of Tall Corn Music, which released Tanaka’s album Jet Set Siempre No. 1, says besides appealing to ’80s mixtape nostalgia, cassettes “intrigue a younger generation who might see a piece of dead tech as a way to differentiate themselves.” Somebody better start teaching the kids how to wind tape with a pencil. They do still use pencils, right?