'This was huge for me,' the soulful songstress tells ET.
Tori Kelly is going country.
The 24-year-old singer is teaming up with Chris Lane for his next single, "Take Back Home Girl," a soulful ode to those girls you can bring home to mom. The song will be featured on Lane's next album.
"I've been a big fan of Tori's for quite some time and I had this song that I was looking for a duet with," Lane tells ET exclusively. "They asked me, 'Who's your dream collaboration partner?' and she was the first person I said."
"I got a random text message from my manager sending me the song and he was like, 'Do you like it?' and I was like, 'I actually am obsessed with it,'" Kelly says. "He didn't even tell me the artist or anything and we were like, 'Cool! Let's do it.'"
Listen to a sneak peek of the song in the player above!
"I've always loved country music," Kelly adds. "[But I] never actually did anything in the country world, so this was huge for me."
Lane couldn't help gushing that she "absolutely killed it" in the studio.
The "Fix" singer is currently finishing up on Florida Georgia Line's Smooth tour before embarking on his own headlining (appropriately dubbed) Take Back Home Tour this fall. Both Lane and Kelly are hoping to team up onstage to bring their new duet to life.
"I know she's got a busy schedule with her touring and in the studio and all that kinda stuff, but if it lines up with schedules and whatnot, I will have her out any day of the week," Lane promises, with Kelly adding that she'd "love that."
"It'll happen," she promises. "It has to happen at some point."
In the meantime, both Lane and Kelly are both in the studio working on their sophomore albums.
"I think I just write about normal life, whatever I'm going through and lately I've been inspired by other people's stories," Kelly says. "I think I got to a point where I was like, 'I'm bored of writing about myself all the time. So, what's your story? Tell me about your life.' And I'll kind of try to see through their perspective."
"I always want to record songs that people show up to and can just let loose and have fun and move and dance," Lane teases. "That was kinda the theme for my first record. I sang about real-life stuff and situations, whether it was with me or somebody else that I was singing about. For this one, I kinda kept the same theme. A little bit different material, but just the same vibe, you know, as far as a lot of upbeat songs."