Maren Morris went through a scary time period after she called out Morgan Wallen three years ago, especially where her young son was concerned.

In a new interview on the Work in Progress podcast posted Thursday (Aug. 29), the 34-year-old musician opened up about the backlash she received immediately after slamming the “Last Night” singer for using a racial slur in 2021. “I mean, the death threat portion for me as a young mother was obviously scary,” Morris told host Sophia Bush. “And it wasn’t death threats against me. It was against my son, too. So it’s like, ‘Oh, wow. Now we’re involving the kids, the ones that you cared so much about.’”

Morris’ son Hayes — whom she shares with her ex-husband, songwriter Ryan Hurd — was less than a year old when a video of Wallen using the N-word began circulating. The “Cut!” singer joined Kelsea Ballerini, Mickey Guyton and more country stars in admonishing the behavior by tweeting: “We all know it wasn’t his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse.”

“You’re like, ‘How are people this pissed over the criticism of cruelty?’” Morris reflected of the negative responses her tweet received on Work in Progress. “I think it’s because they’re not only defending the person that said this, but they’re taking it personally as if I’m criticizing them, which I think says a lot more about their interpretation of criticism — and what that content was — than me as a person calling out someone using the N word, or even transphobia s–t I’ve criticized in the past.”

For his part, Wallen apologized one week after the video went viral. “The video you saw was me on hour 72 of 72 of a bender, and that’s not something I’m proud of,” he said in a video statement. “I accepted some invitations from some amazing Black organizations, some executives and leaders, to engage in some very real and honest conversations.”

As for Morris? She stands by what she said. “I don’t regret it, I don’t apologize,” she added on the podcast. “I feel the exact same way as I did that day … Don’t be racist. Don’t be transphobic. Don’t be homophobic.”

Listen to Morris’ conversation on Work in Progress below.

Stevie Wonder wants us to come together. The legendary artist dropped a new track on Friday (Aug. 30), fittingly titled, “Can We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart?”

The track features a strong call for unity over an acoustic guitar as he demands in the hook: “Can we fix our nation’s broken heart?/ Are we brave enough to try?”

While the song is not political in its lyrics, the track’s release is timely with the presidential elections coming up in November. Wonder took the stage on the third night of the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, sharing some powerful remarks for the audience before performing “Higher Ground,” off his 1973 album, Innervisions. “This is a moment to tell your children where you were and what you did,” he declared. “When we stand between history’s pain and tomorrows promises we must choose courage complacency.”

Throughout his career, Wonder has always stood up for injustices through song, most recently in 2020. He released two songs, “Where Is Our Love Song?” and “Can’t Put It in the Hands of Fate.” “I keep thinking about how we can make the world better,” he told Billboard at the time. “I’m in this place where the more I’m seeing things like people dying in this pandemic, killings amid Black Lives Matter, social media negativity, anger … the more I’m a believer that respect is an action word and so is love. I also have a song with PJ Morton, “Where Did All Your Happy Go,” for his next album. It’s about not letting anybody steal your happiness or take your joy away. The driving force for me has to always be the goodness in our hearts.”

Listen to Stevie Wonder’s “Can We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart?” below.

With two concurrent viral hits right now, “Ohnana” and “UWAIE,” Kapo is having a moment.

Far from an overnight success, the Colombian newcomer has been hustling in the music industry for 15 years. In fact, his first approach to music was at the age of 12, with música popular (Colombia’s version of regional Mexican music). 

“I lived at a gas station in a small town called El Cabuyal, where that’s the only type of music that was heard,” he tells Billboard. “I sang at the small stores and parking lots near the truck stop, that’s how I debuted, and people would give me coins. I wanted to become a global artist.”

At 13, Kapo recorded his first urban song, “Yo Tengo Un Sueño” (I have a dream), which became popular among his school friends. He pursued a brief career in mass communication, but always with the itch to follow his dream as a singer. At 16, he sold his motorcycle, and with the money he moved to the capital, Bogotá, invested in a music video, and in a promo tour. 

The first person to support him was an artist from Cali called Big Daddy “El Negro,” who would take him to his shows to sing and connected him with other artist and producers in the industry. In search of extra income, Kapo participated on the reality show Yo Me Llamo, where he would imitate Puerto Rican rapper Cosculluela. For two years, he was also the background vocalist for Dominican-born, Panamanian-based artist Mr. Saik. 

In 2019, he inked a record deal with La Industria, Inc.,—home to Nicky Jam and Manuel Turizo, to name a few—and released songs such as “Pelinegra” with Nánpa Basico and “Bulevar” with Esteban Rojas and Pirlo, which gained traction locally. Still, Kapo was behind his global hit. 

“I realized that I didn’t have to do what worked, but what moved me,” he notes. “I made romantic music all my life, but I kept it to myself. I have a very bohemian vein, an old soul. My mother always spoke to me about very beautiful things. She is a very humble lady, her vocabulary is not very advanced because she always worked in a restaurant, but she raised her son and her son looked for alternatives to succeed with the correct morals and principles.” 

He analyzed the music industry, other artists, the songs that made him known locally — and realized that there was a lack of feel-good, reflective, romantic music. He changed the way he dressed and talked, he focused on his health, read books, and took yoga classes. But it was one precise trip to Jamaica, and a heartbreak, that changed his fate. 

“Ohnana,” released this June, was born during a music camp where he was joined by dancehall artist Lion Fiyah and Colombian hitmaker Gangsta. “After I visited the Bob Marley museum, I worked on the song, I was in a vibe, and in another tune with my vocal tones. ‘Ohnana’ means ‘trust everything will be fine.’”

And the suave Afrobeat with poetic lyrics earned Kapo his first global hit — one that he manifested for 15 years. “Ohnana” peaks at No. 21 on the Hot Latin Songs chart this week, and rises to a new peak on the Billboard Global 200, at No. 60. Plus rises to its No. 30 high on Global Excl. U.S.

Simultaneously, his recent single “UWAIE” — which means “I’m in love with you” in his very own “Kapito Language,” and is an ode to the women in his life — debuts at No. 35 on Hot Latin Songs and at No. 138 on Global 200 and at No. 81 on Global Excl. U.S. The song also counts over 1 million video creations on TikTok at the time of publishing. 

“I started to declare everything. I started to talk positively to myself. I started to love myself, and not go where all the sheep go,” he concludes. 

Below, learn more about this month’s Billboard Latin Artist on the Rise:

Name: Juan David Loaiza Sepúlveda

Age: 27

Recommended Song: “UWAIE”

Major Accomplishment: “Loving what I do and expanding what I do in music to nourish my life and my family. My mother is calm and can count on a son who is moving forward and giving love to the world. More than having hit songs, my mother feels comfortable that I can trust in me and not doubt my creativity. My voice is imperfect musically but in the end it transmits and reaches people. That is what makes me happiest, that through my gift I was able to support my family and connect with people in the best way possible… by being myself.”

What’s Next: “The ‘Ohnana’ remix and a salsa version of the song are coming. I would also like to do an English version with artists from Africa, but that’s a project I have in mind. I’m going to be on the remix of Greeicy’s ‘A Veces a Besos,’ and I’m going to release music with Maluma and J Balvin, but also a song of mine called ‘Sonrie’ (smile) that reflects everything I’m feeling at this moment.”

This week in dance music: An all-star collection of French electronic artists including Jean-Michel Jarre, Breakbot, Busy P and Alan Braxe were announced as performers for the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paralympics Games in Paris; Chase & Status’ Stormzy collab “Backbone” continued its run at the top of the U.K. Official Singles Chart; we spoke with The Blessed Madonna about her forthcoming album and aspiring to be “a little shard of glass in the industry’s foot”; Charli XCX teased a new project; artists including Tokimonsta and Louie Vega offered free music in exchange for participating in democracy; we spoke with producer Clams Casino; Clean Bandit & Zara Larsson’s “Symphony” hit No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50; ADE 2024 expanded its program; and we talked to the CEO of Burning Man, which is happening this week, about the more than 100 other official Burning Man events that happen around the world.

And of course, there’s the music. These are the best new dance projects of the week.

Zedd, Telos

There’s a barrage of different styles and influences on Zedd’s new album, Telos, but on every single one of the 10 tracks, you can hear the great ambition embedded in the project, and also the achievement of its lofty aspirations. The long-awaited follow-up to the producer’s 2015 sophomore album, True Colors — which along with his 2012 debut Clarity set him up as a wunderkind of the EDM era, with a special dexterity in that genre’s pop impulses that delivered a string of hits to the Hot 100 — Telos finds the artist born Anton Zaslavski flexing every one of his musical muscles. The project shows off his classical training and good taste across productions that span classical, jazz, cinematic maximalism, Middle Eastern sounds and electronic party music that nods to the EDM origins of Zaslavski’s career, but evolves his sound into a sophisticated, nuanced (but yes, still danceable) place.

The album features an all-star collection of collaborators, including Bea Miller, who’s on both lead single “Out of Time” and the hooky, punchy “Tangerine Rays”; John Mayer, who adds his singular laidback cool to the jazz fusion influenced “Automatic Yes”; stadium rock stars Muse, who lend operatic grandiosity to the album-closing, spiritual “Epos”; and even Jeff Buckley, who Zaslavski reinterprets with style and grace on his version of the late artist’s 1994 “Dream Brother,” which leans into Radiohead territory without being reductive and hits hard with its string-drenched drops. Altogether, Telos just doesn’t sound like anything else produced recently in the electronic world or, arguably, beyond.

But the artist explains the guiding principles here best, with Zaslavski saying that the Greek word “telos” has multiple meanings, one of them being “accomplishment” or “completion of human art. I’ve always dreamed of creating an album that, 30 years on, I can look back and be incredibly proud of. That will be just as amazing then as it is right now, because it’s not based on trends or sound design that might fall off — it’s based on music, just like the albums that shaped me growing up that I still adore to this day. With Telos, I created something I didn’t think I was capable of — it just took a bit of time to get there.”

Zedd soon to bring the album to a live format with a fall North American tour that includes shows at the L.A. State Historic Park, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Tycho, Infinite Health

Few producers capture the heady, sun-soaked psychedelia of NorCal as well as Tycho, who again takes us up the coast and into the redwoods with his seventh studio album, Infinite Health. The project is classic Tycho, offering tracks that are clean yet emotive and sophisticated while still getting the blood pumping, simultaneously capturing brightness and melancholy through often hazy, lo-fi IDM that contains thematic multitudes.

“‘Green’ and ‘Devices’ represent the conceptual bookends of the…album,” the artist Scott Hansen writes. “‘Green’ is an elegy to my childhood home, a once-rural town on the outskirts of Sacramento where I spent my youth forging a deep connection with nature. ‘Devices’ represents the struggle to stay connected to nature and our own humanity in the modern world. I wanted to illustrate this tension with a set of sonically contrasting songs.” The album is out via Mom + Pop Records in the U.S and through Ninja Tune in the rest of the world, and the 27-date Infinite Health tour will take Hansen across North America this fall.

Swedish House Mafia & Alicia Keys, “Finally”

Having woven their edit of Kings of Tomorrow classic into their sets for years now, it follows that Swedish House Mafia have now fully revamped the 2001 house anthem, bringing in none other than Alicia Keys for vocals and trading the brightly bumping bassline, hi-hat and warm keyboards of the original for a much bigger and more urgent swirl of strings. The track extends the XXL house vibe of their 2022 album Paradise Again, and nods to that album’s ambition to lean harder into the genre that the trio were so influenced by that they in fact name themselves after it.

Jon Hopkins, part ii – palace/illusion

Following his 2021 album Music For Psychedelic Therapy (the intention of which was stated right there in the title), English maestro Jon Hopkins returns with an album so deep and soothing that it could very well be used for the same purpose. “Designed,” Hopkins says, “to reconnect you to the deepest part of yourself,” Ritual is subtle, deep and often profound, with the project first sparking to life in 2022 when Hopkins was commissioned to work on an immersive experience, Dreammachine, that set the celestial sonic and visual aesthetic for the eight-track Ritual. The album is out now on Domino Records.

Caribou, “Come Find Me”

Other DJs might party harder, but is anyone having more fun that Caribou? The artist brings the playfulness that’s always defined the Canadian artist’s visual aesthetic to the video for his latest, “Come Find Me,” which finds a dancer in a tracksuit and oversized Snaith mask dancing alone in settings that include the bus, a city sidewalk and an open field. (Watch for a cameo from Snaith himself at the end.) The track itself is warm, gently building IDM — in other words, classic Caribou — and comes from the artist’s sixth studio album, Honey, coming Oct. 4 on Merge Records.

Andy C & Becky Hill, “Indestructable”

As drum ‘n’ bass extends its position on the U.K. charts, two of the genre’s key players link for the predictably walloping “Indestructible,” which gets an official release today on Astralwerks but dates back almost ten years, when Andy C first included an early version in his sets. With Hill possessing one of the defining voices of the genre and Andy C being one of its architects, the result is an acutely powerful meeting of the mninds, with Hill’s lyrics pointing to the success of genre itself.

“’How did we end up here, look how far we’ve come,’ say it all,” Andy C says. “It sums up my relationship with DnB, how popular the genre is right now as well as how huge Becky’s career is. It’s just so magical.”