We’re all seeing a side of Carly Pearce usually reserved for her closest friends, as the singer looks to reveal new layers on her latest album, 'Honest Woman.' Pearce recently joined Katie Neal to talk about the project, awkward music videos, life on the road, and more this week during the 'Superstar Power Hour.'

“I hope they get to know me better,” Carly says when asked what she hopes fans take away from the new album. “I feel like I really stretched myself on this one to go places that I haven't before. I hope they get to know me better and I hope they feel seen.”

“This is my 5th record, and I think I started to wonder what else was left to say and challenged myself to think about, ‘OK. Yes, we have no problem with heartbreak. We have no problem with sass, but take it a step further,’” says Pearce. “I just really kind of peeled back some layers of my own self to think about maybe what people don't know about me, that my closest friends would know about me.”

In many ways we’ve unlocked the next level of Carly Pearce by going back to the beginning with her, to the classic Country and Bluegrass songs that first shaped her love of music. You can hear the influence on songs like “You Can Have Him,” which channels the same straightforward wisdom as some of her heroes. “I've always said that traditional Country music was a big part of my life,” she says. “When you start listening to that song, it's upright bass, it sounds like maybe what Loretta Lynn would have sang in 1965 on the Opry. Like, we go there.”

Pearce will take the new album on the road for a set of “Up Close” intimate shows in smaller venues across the country later this year. “I've gotten to travel and tour in all different venues, sizes, you know, all these things, and I'm very lucky that I've gotten to do all of that,” Carly tells Katie, “but I think what I have found that my favorite are the smaller venues and just being able to have a conversation.”

“People don't come to my shows to see the lights and the costume changes and the videos. They come to see me sing and they come even more than that to hear me talk. That's become the storytelling part of my shows,” admits Pearce. “I really wanted to make it different, really for myself.”

Unfortunately on this tour though, Carly will be without her dogs, Johnny and June, who have been “fired” from the road crew after some bad behavior. “They're a little naughty,” reveals Pearce. “I have to be honest, they bite people.”

“They're very sweet if they love you, but they'll bite you. We used to think Johnny was peeing in my guitar player's bunk, but I think it was June. They're bad. I love them so much, but they've kind of become like divas, so they stay at their grandparents' house.”

For more from Carly Pearce on making music videos with Riley Green, and the story behind some of her biggest hits, listen to the full 'Superstar Power Hour' interview above.

It’s even too hot to golf for Kane Brown, who is surviving the sweltering Nashville summer in part by visiting the cool studios of 'Katie & Company' above the Hard Rock Cafe. The singer joins Katie Neal this week for the 'Superstar Power Hour' to talk about his latest chart achievement, his bar on Broadway, and the artist who gave him the “confidence” and “motivation” to have a career in Country music.

The season has been busy for Brown, including another number one at the top of the Country charts, with “Woman.”

“A number one never gets old,” admits Kane. “You always have goals set, and I will say, that's one thing out of all the goals that hasn't changed is the number one song. So I'm excited for it, and ‘Woman’ is, it's one of those songs that kind of takes me back to my earlier career of just having a special feeling about the song, and I haven't had that feeling in a while for a song, so I'm glad it's doing good.”

Kane is still hard at work on the next chapter, “very happy” about the progress he has made on his upcoming album. “The album I'm working on right now is, it was originally gonna be kind of throwbacky, like fifties sounding, one song that kind of has an Eagles vibe to it, then I have a Motown type song, but just kind of old school.”

“Were gonna do some music videos that were like short films to them. I had a whole plan, but that takes time. So we hadn't even started on the music videos or we've kind of got ideas, but I don't know. I might be biting off more than I can chew.”

Kane is also a part of his friend, Lauren Alaina’s new album, which arrived everywhere on August 28. It marks a professional reunion for the long-time collaborators, as Brown credits Alaina with providing the initial confidence for his career, recalling how she encouraged him to sing back in middle school choir.

“So Lauren, of course, was on ‘American Idol,’ and we live in a small town of like 9000 people, and they had a parade for her,” remembers Kane. “She's just always been singing, so talented, she deserves the world.”

“She's what gave me the confidence and the motivation to be in the music industry,” Brown reveals. “So I owe my whole career to her, So yeah, I root for her.”

For much more from Kane Brown, check out the full interview above.

Before getting into their emotional, twelfth studio album, 'It’s A Dying Art,' which arrives everywhere on August 28, Little Big Town stepped into the strange and supernatural during a talk with Katie Neal.

Beginning with the haunting legends of a historic Franklin home where they once recorded, the band shared a terrifying tale about "Beulah," the resident ghost they believe once flooded their studio, threatening precious analog tapes and artifacts.

“I'd left the studio last that night and there's a little bathroom upstairs in the office side of the studio, and I turned the light off, faucets off, shut the door,” shares Philip Sweet. “Karen gets there the next morning, first thing, and the lights are on in that bathroom, faucet's full blast, and it was flooding water pouring through the ceiling fan downstairs.”

“All I could think was like, ‘oh my gosh, if water got into the studio,’” Karen Fairchild gasps. “I ran in there and it was like the water stopped right at the kitchen door.”

“Fast forward to someone that is like a ghost historian… said that water is the way that ghosts communicate tears,” reveals Karen. “We were cutting a song called ‘Evangeline’ about an abused woman. So, anyhow, Beulah, we didn't ever think she wasn't our friend, but, she was there.”

No ghosts were encountered in the making of Little Big Town’s new album, 'It’s A Dying Art,' but very present is the band’s desire to create hope in dark times. “Maybe ‘we could have it all’ probably sums up the sentiment of the whole record,” Karen says. “That there's hope in the darkest of days, you know, and you'll get up again, and it's about all the little journeys and the nooks and crannies of life.”

The title comes from a track on the project, which Sweet says captures the true connection of Little Big Town. “With all that's going on and changing in music and AI and all that, what we really love is being human and making human connection with the band and the writers and the sounds, and you know, being human.”

For much more from Little Big Town, check out the full 'Superstar Power Hour' interview above.