Where to start? There’s the sound—a voice with the sexy, menacing melodrama of Roy Orbison, run through the filters of New Wave and the opening theme of “Rawhide.” But when talking about Orville Peck, whose début album, “Pony,” came out earlier this year, we probably should begin with the look, and, more specifically, the masks. Peck (a stage name; his real identity is searchable, but why not play along?) performs with his eyes covered by various bespoke leather Lone Ranger masks, with brothel-door fringe hanging down over his mouth. In the video for “Hope to Die,” he takes on the roles of luchador, matador, and rodeo cowboy, all mixed together. In a striking interlude, he performs a bit of line dancing that morphs, midway, into something more delicate, balletic. Later, he has a standoff with another man in the traditional pose of a gunfighter, but Peck is framed through the other man’s legs, which are bare, standing in boots. Not exactly your grandpa’s Wild West.

What we officially know: Peck is Canadian, gay, a transplant from punk music. Many of the shibboleths of country gatekeeping were being obliterated—and good riddance—well before the current yee-haw pop moment and the world dominance of “Old Town Road.” But at least one genre-guarding concern has lingered, and it has to do with the idea of sincerity, both in the music and in all that surrounds it. This concern is born of resentment and dread, mostly among fans: resentment that pop musicians think that making country is easy; and dread, when some pop acts do make country hits, that maybe it is. Peck’s masked persona might be seen as a pose, a posture, a gimmick. Yet, as he explained earlier this year, in an interview with Vice, he’s not messing around. “There’s a lot of theatricality to what I do and that’s purposeful. . . . It’s ironic because, at the same time, I truly believe this project is the most sincere thing I’ve done artistically, the most exposed that I’ve ever been as a singer, as a writer, as an artist.”

But sometimes it’s fun to be messed with—and “Pony” is just knowing and cheeky enough to keep us on our toes. Peck packs his lyrics with dusty references to Marlboro Reds, desert city lights, and Johnny Cash. On “Roses Are Falling,” he speaks plaintively over the music, like Conway Twitty. “Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call)” has gunshots, Morricone whistles, and one actual “yee-haw.” The album’s standout track, “Dead of Night,” a lush Western-Gothic romantic ballad about two young men on the run, mixes in some rattlesnake percussion, a kind of wink at danger. Yet when Peck soars into the chorus, his aching falsetto ringing out, it’s clear that there is something, at the heart of this, that’s deadly serious.