Moses Sumney has a voice that can melt hearts: a gently grainy tenor that often ascends into an immaculate, unearthly falsetto. It’s no wonder that his first public gigs in Los Angeles, back in 2013, almost immediately drew fellow musicians as well as a swarm of record-label types eager to shape his music into a commercial commodity.

“A lot of people were trying to pull me in a very pop direction. That’s immediately where most people saw me,” he recalled over breakfast earlier this month at the Soho Grand. Instead, he realized, “I didn’t have to go there. I could go weirder.”

He took his time, experimented, collaborated and followed the ideas and instincts that led him to the release, this week, of his debut album, “Aromanticism.” It’s a musical reverie that has slow-motion R&B melting into folky tranquillity and undulating loops. “There’s a feeling I wanted to capture on this record,” he said. “That moment as you’re falling asleep, or right when you wake up, when you’re still one foot in and one foot out of the dream world, and everything is really murky and you feel like you’re floating.”

At times, Mr. Sumney lets his voice hover exposed and nearly alone, set above the most minimal accompaniment. He also layers his vocals into cascading, convoluted harmonies and brings in glimmers of lush string ensembles and subtle funk. Filtering into the music, he freely acknowledged, are echoes of Nina Simone, Kanye West, Björk, Joanna Newsom, the psych-folk songwriter Linda Perhacs and the Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, among many others. The lyrics hold declarations, impressions, conversations and memories; the songs drift into one another, for an album meant to be heard as a whole. Within the sensual haze, there’s one thing Mr. Sumney doesn’t use his voice for: love songs.