Moses Sumney’s titties are bouncing a little too much for his liking. To be clear, his pecs, the sculpted result of months of dedicated exercise with a personal trainer and sticking to a strict ketogenic diet, are spectacular. Just, you know, a tad too expressive for this particular occasion. The 6-foot-4 singer is sloped over a MacBook Pro in the kitchen of his Asheville, North Carolina rental, reviewing an early cut of an upcoming lyric video. In the clip, it’s nighttime, and Moses is bare-chested and running vigorously in place, wearing a pair of cycling shorts with enough body-sculpting compression to make Kim Kardashian proud.

He stares at the screen. “Maybe the titties are actually OK,” he concedes, with a giggle. When Moses Sumney laughs, it feels like the entire room expands, rearranging itself to make space. Aside from a pair of plush slippers the color of a graham cracker, Moses is wearing, as he interminably does, only black: a black T-shirt with gaping voids where there should be sleeves; a black kimono-style wrap; black tapered sweatpants that, even with a tiny hole in the knee, look impossibly chic. On two shoe racks by the front door I count 15 pairs of black boots, along with half a dozen other black non-boot options.

It’s a couple of weeks before the release of the first half of Moses’ new 20-song opus græ, due out this week, with the second part coming in May. The album’s music is as ambitious as the man behind it. A hypnotic songwriter, guitarist, and producer with a glassy falsetto and an immense vocal range, he exposes unlikely connections between pop and experimental, with songs that are rooted in knotty emotions. In a few days, he’ll launch a residency and art installation at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, the same venue where he played his first shows seven years ago.

He has a dizzying amount to accomplish before then. Moses, who prides himself on both independence and a keen sense of quality control, insists he’s a lot more involved in the day-to-day of his career than the average artist. “As a single person, it’s your relationship, it’s who you talk to every day,” he says. His abridged to-do list includes: finding an L.A. Airbnb suitable enough to house his band for a month; approving the flier announcing the residency; editing the accompanying press release; nailing down details for the music video he’s gearing up to direct; picking up his guitar from the repair shop; packing; spending two days humoring a curious reporter.

First, though, Moses will shoot another DIY lyric video until midnight, and then he’ll stay up another four hours, sending emails and grinding away on album obligations. This, he says, is his life in Asheville. His house, complete with a porch swing and a rocking chair where he takes business calls, is a peaceful homebase for the times when he’s not performing or recording across the globe. There is an open-plan living room with a velvet sectional and matching navy-blue rug, and a spacious kitchen stocked with nearly a dozen varieties of tea. Where most people would place a dining area, Moses, 28, has opted for a cozy reading nook, though he admits not much reading actually happens there.

Upstairs, he has converted an attic-style loft into an ad hoc meditation and exercise area. There’s a yoga mat and, against a window, a prim, curtained pile of grey pillows and fabrics he describes as his “princess bed.” He has a simple music studio, a minimalist bedroom, and a bathroom he jokes must be the size of my apartment in Brooklyn. For someone who’s explored perpetual aloneness in his art and his life—his first album, 2017’s Aromanticism, explored the lack of romantic love in his life; Olivia Laing’s isolation chronicle The Lonely City is a favorite recent read—I can’t help but notice the ironic luxury of his double sink.