BET nominated, Billboard congratulated, and all-around rising R&B star kwn joins us at the Hard Rock Hotel New York for an Audacy Check In, telling Poet Taylor about her new single, "do what i say," working with Kehlani, and the importance of being "unapologetically yourself."

"I like to just get straight to the point, which is crazy cause I'm actually a shy person," kwn admits about her music. "I'm a bit introverted until you break me down and get to know me, so I put it all out in my music."

"I'm the person in the back of the room being very observant of everyone around me, but I think the confidence just comes from me just being myself and not letting anybody steer me away from who I am and who I'm trying to be."

The latest offering, the commanding, "not asking twice" track, "do what i say" is the latest to capture the attention of fans, after kwn's collab with Kehlani on "worst behaviour" and opening for her on tour, served as an introduction to many. "As soon as we came up with the idea for the video, we were like, it's obviously gonna do something to the world," kwn reveals about the steamy visual with Kehlani. "The response was insane. I'm super grateful for it. Obviously there's been some bad stuff, but there's all of the good stuff is like overwritten all of that."

That response ranged from "bad stuff" to love, to someone even offering up a family member to kwn in the DMs. "Somebody DM'ed me and said, 'I'd like to volunteer my mum for a night with you,'" kwn shares. "That threw me all the way off. That was insane."

For more on kwn's relationship with Kehlani, her upcoming EP, and staying authentic, check out the full Audacy Check In above.

Rise Against have offered up a few glimpses of what's next with scorching singles, "Nod," and "Prizefighter." This week we get yet another, with the commanding "I Want It All," and details on a new album, 'RICOCHET,' due out August 15. Now, frontman Tim McIlrath dives in during an Audacy Check In to talk about the new track, shared experiences, 25 years of Rise Against, and more.

"I think raw is a perfect word," Tim tells Abe Kanan about the new song, "I Want It All."

"I think we captured a lot of it live. We were like kind of just going with the energy of it, just not overthinking it. It's a burst of energy of a song, we wanted it to have that kind of vibe," he adds. "I'm looking forward to really sinking my teeth into it on stage."

"I Want It All" is the latest preview of the band's upcoming album, 'RICOCHET,' and the band will get plenty of chances to bring that raw energy to the stage, with a co-headlining tour with Papa Roach this fall. "I think that's just something that's just in our DNA since we first started playing in this band, like being respectful of the music," Tim says of Rise Against's live show. "And then playing music that doesn't allow you to phone it in, you know what I mean? Like the music, it just, it kind of gets a hold of you and it makes you really live through it."

For much more from Tim and Rise Against, listen to the full Audacy Check In above.

Justice recently joined us in the studio for an Audacy Check In, talking with Bru about their hit with Tame Impala, "Neverender," and what's next for the French dance duo.

Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay say 2025 is flying by, thanks in part to the whirlwind success of their song, "Neverender."

"When we wrote the song, like the three of us, we felt good about it," admits Xavier de Rosnay. "It's only when we played it at Coachella last year before the album release, so the song was not known, that we saw that people had an immediate reaction on something they don't know, which we took as a good omen."

"We always say that it is a collective hallucination. You don't know why your song makes it somewhere. It's just that at some point there's a bunch of people who think, 'oh, this is what I want to hear,' and this is something that we don't really have any control over, so it's cool."

Part of the secret to Justice's success lies in their work ethic, and willingness to let it breathe. "Our secret is that we take vacations every other week," shares Xavier. "We would work one week on the record, then take one week off, then come back just in order to always be a bit fresh and also wanting to go there because when you spend too much time not stopping, then you start like saturating and focusing on maybe the wrong details."

That fresh mind helped the duo dig deep into the details, some that come blaring through your speakers, and others that are more hidden along the way. "There is a beer bottle hidden somewhere on the record," smiles Gaspard Augé. "The percussion that you hear in your left ear on 'Neverender' is made with a beer bottle," follows Xavier. "At the end when we recorded some of the parts to produce the song. We had a drummer make some tracks, and we told him, because we demoed it as a triangle, we told him, 'OK, can you play that with a triangle?' And he listened to the track and he said, 'No, I'm gonna do it with a beer bottle. Give me a beer.'"

"So he drank the beer and then he played it just with a beer bottle and we have a video of this actually. He's an amazing drummer, every time you hear live drums on the record, that's him. And he's a classical musician, then he was playing in jazz band, so he's a jazz drummer. And, we love people who are not afraid of doing things a bit differently."

Don't miss our full Audacy Check In with Justice above.