LOS ANGELES — “Are you afraid of snakes?” asked Brittney Parks , the songwriter and violinist who records as Sudan Archives. In an interview at her home, where her bedroom often doubles as her recording studio, she was introducing me to Goldie, her ball python, as he languorously wrapped his gold-patterned body around her tattooed forearm.

Goldie appears in the video for “Glorious” from Sudan Archives’ superb debut album, “Athena,” which was released Nov. 1. Her pet snake is also “kind of like the theme of the album,” she said. “It’s like me — people are sometimes intimidated by me, just because of how I look. The album is about duality and also about being misinterpreted. People are afraid and they almost scream when they see him, but look how cute and shiny he is! He don’t want to hurt nobody.”

With a dozen songs on two EPs that she released in 2017 and 2018, “Sudan Archives” and “Sink,” Parks, 25, has already earned a place among boundary-defying R&B innovators like FKA twigs, Frank Ocean, Solange, SZA, Kelela, Sampha and H.E.R. They have been turning R&B into an elastic, futuristic realm where fantasy and self-revelation, otherworldly electronics and real-world musicianship are constantly recombining. With “Athena” she pushes even further, sonically and emotionally, allowing her songs to be more revealing. “I washed away my fears and trusted my own ears,” she sings in “Confessions,” the album’s first single.