SANDPOINT — There’s a lot of hype surrounding vinyl records these days. If you walk into any major bookstore retailer that also has a music department, you’re likely to find more LPs than CDs in stock.

Recording artists now make the release of a record album part of the big promotional splash when they also announce they have a new collection of songs available for downloads. It’s no wonder — new technologies have created a market where musicians are paid fractions of pennies for each song sold. And with every passing year — and every new site that delivers much of the music for free or nearly so — digital sales have been on the skids.

But vinyl is selling again, muscling its way back to popularity to become the top-grossing medium for recorded music over the past several years.

Ironically, CDs, which were directly responsible for what looked like the demise of records, now appear to be a dinosaur themselves, a casualty of the Mp3 files that promise instant access and the ability to store countless tunes on a smart phone. That leaves two audio formats that couldn’t be more different — analog albums that deliver a broad sonic landscape and digital downloads that compress that musical information until nuance is sacrificed on the altar of convenience.

After more than 30 years of being swept ever closer to the dustbin of history, vinyl is cool again. And Kris Kurrus has been waiting patiently on the sidelines for a moment just such as this.

His new hole-in-the-wall shop, 7B Grooves, is all about vinyl and the turntables that bring it to life. According to the owner, he has about 2,000 albums displayed in record bins, with another 4,000 in the adjacent stockroom and a total collection of approximately 20,000 titles stored off-site, all waiting to be cleaned, graded and, in time, rotated into the store for sale.

Since his soft opening in late spring, Kurrus has been welcoming a demographic that most retailers can only dream of, as teens mingle with their elders and discover anew or rediscover the two-sided, long-playing wonder of spinning discs.

“There’s young folks that are experiencing vinyl for the first time and a lot of older folks who never gave up on it,” said Kurrus. “And they’re like, ‘I told you so!’”

Which brings up the debate about the sonic attributes of records — an analog format where a stylus slips along a groove to turn physical vibration into sound — as opposed to digital formats such as CDs and sound files. There’s no doubt which side Kurrus falls on.

“An album is so much smoother sounding,” he said. “There’s more information, more definition, more bandwidth on a vinyl record.”

Along with the ritual aspect of placing the disc on a turntable and dropping the needle down, there’s “the artifact of the record itself,” Kurrus pointed out.

To back up his argument, he turned around and slipped an album from a nearby bin, holding it up in his hands to show off the cover.

“This has been somewhere — it’s been on the planet for 40 years,” he said. “It’s not an Mp3 that you download.”

Lest we wax overly eloquent about the defining traits of the record album, Kurrus makes an equally passionate case for the medium that turns tiny grooves into big sound.

“There’s a reason that DJs and audiophiles call the turntable an ‘instrument,’” the owner said. “Because it’s giving a performance — it’s an instrument giving a unique performance.”

That performance has two acts — side 1 and side 2 — with an intermission in between as the album is physically turned over, he added. Those of us of a certain age will recall the golden age of vinyl, when the acquisition of a new album meant calling friends together for a communal listening session. As the music played, the album cover was passed around so that everyone could read the liner notes and explore any extra goodies that often came with the package, to include posters, booklets and pages of cutouts.

However, it was the music that mattered most — and the sequence was everything. For artists, the format was theatrical, a chance to tell a story and take the listener on a journey. And it led to the advent of the “concept album,” where the order of the tracks created a dynamic tension that is lost in the easily shuffled world of downloads.

Imagine, for instance, disrupting the flow of classics such as The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” or The Who’s “Who’s Next” or “Fragile” by Yes. The very idea offends the countless hours of sweat and toil these artists put into creating a sequential listening experience.

“That was the neat thing about it — listening to the deep tracks,” Kurrus said. “If you look at how albums are laid out, you wanted to lead with your strong suit and end with a bang. The deep tracks — where the artists got to communicate in a way where they can’t do today with downloaded singles — were in the middle.

“For the artist, the hits were like loss-leaders to get you where they wanted you to go.”

Increasingly, older music buffs are coming home to the experience, while younger buyers are developing an appreciation for this exercise in generational recycling.

“It really is recycling the emotions and the music to a new generation,” said Kurrus. “It’s just as real and exciting to them as it was to my mom and dad when they were still alive and listening to records.”

For the 7B Grooves owner, this record revival comes as a reward for holding his ground as a true believer in the power of the LP. He worked for years at a local store called the Music Express when it was located downtown and carried vinyl as its retail mainstay. His world revolved around artists and albums and the impact they had on society. Every day was another opportunity to learn something new as he opened boxes of new releases and heard them for the first time.

Today, the shop owner is selling many of those same records to a fresh crop of listeners. And they sound as good as ever.

“It’s a piece of pop culture,” he said. “Not only the history, but how the public responded to different artists and all the influences that affected us growing up.

“It’s lessons of literature; lessons of the human condition,” he added. “It’s music.”

7B Grooves is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment, at 502 Cedar St., Ste. E, in the Cedar Street Crossing building at the corner of Fifth and Cedar in Sandpoint. Parking is best accessed off of Alder St.

Information: 208-263-2544, or online at www.7bgrooves.com