"I wish that all my music could sound like Beyoncé's music," Chester Endersby Gwazda admits.

The Baltimore-via-Jersey producer, songwriter and musician is a self-professed pop fiend whose deepest musical loves bear familiar names like Michael Jackson and The Beatles. Shroud, Gwazda's recent release, is pop pushed to its hemispheric limits, a categorically gorgeous effort that is at once familiar and appealingly alien.

It is also Gwazda's debut into solo-project society, a fact that's hard to believe given his history. A go-to producer who has helmed albums by Dan Deacon, Future Islands, Ecstatic Sunshine and lots more (including Athens' own Cara Beth Satalino), as well as a player in Deacon's touring ensemble and the band Nuclear Power Pants, Shroud marks the first time Gwazda has taken center stage with a collection of his own material.

It began a couple of years ago when, in the brief gaps between recording projects, he began writing and recording his own songs, one at a time.

"I [fell] into a groove," he says. "I got more used to making my own music. It was therapeutic to be working on that stuff, because when you start doing music as a job… it takes the fun out of it a little bit."

Initially, in crafting his own music, Gwazda says, "I felt like I had to take myself seriously." But needed inspiration soon came in the form of the King of Pop.

"I would listen to some of my favorite tracks, like 'Man in the Mirror,' and think, 'That song is so intensely cheesy.' But then I realized I [could] kind of step into that realm a little bit, and not be so hard on myself."

In its manifest looseness, Shroud is deliriously fun—though Gwazda also boasts stunning depth for a first-timer. Beautifully arranged tunes like "Sun Burner" unravel effortlessly, governed by melodic magic. Others, like "Skewed," feel more familiarly Baltimorean, full of bubbly synths and vaguely life-affirming lyricism.

Indeed, if there is a "Baltimore sound," as exemplified by the synth-heavy sonics of acts like Deacon and Future Islands, it is one that Gwazda has had no small hand in crafting. (He sat behind the boards for Bromst, widely cited as the indie-rock pied piper Deacon's crowning achievement to date.)

Yet Shroud belongs to no region, no scene, no movement. It is simply a solid pop record, a highly promising debut from a person making his (hesitant) move into the spotlight.

"It's hard singing in front of people. I've played with Dan Deacon… and that never really fazed me, because I was always sort of on the side. I'd get offstage, and people would be like, 'Did you see the show?'" [And I'd say], 'Yeah, I was onstage.'"

Wilding out on a synth in the midst of a flurry of activity is different from strumming and singing front-and-center, and Gwazda admits that he has to put a little more concentration into his new gig. For his first solo tour, he will be accompanied by a drummer, but the focus will be on him: Chester Endersby Gwazda, Baltimore's emerging pop prince—if not quite yet its Beyoncé.