Two years ago, she was delivering parcels - now KWN is an R&B star

Built around a stuttering, jazzy chord progression, Stand On It was one of the standouts on KWN's debut EP, With All Due Respect, released last June.

The project opens with the defiant statement, "I don't want to be humble no more", a message to the people who doubted her star power.

"I just wanted people to put respect on me," she says. "I was never going to give up or let it push me into the ground."

The rest of the EP echoed the late-night raunch of Worst Behaviour, inspired by classic bedroom jams like Jodeci's Freak'n Me and D'Angelo's Untitled (How Does It Feel).

"Stuff like that's easy to write," KWN told me last December, when she was nominated for the BBC's Sound of 2026 prize.

"Writing emotional and vulnerable music is a lot harder for me."

Six months later, however, her new EP And All Pride Aside, thrums with emotional vulnerability.

On the heart-wrenching Rather Never Love Again, she desperately pines for her ex, singing: "Even if I get you back I don't know if it's going to be the same/ But I will sure as hell spend a lifetime taking all the blame."

The closing track, Heaven's In Your Hands, finds her mourning her grandfather, who died last autumn.

"I think I've just done a little bit of growing up, to be honest," she says of the transformation.

"And I've met people along the way who've taught me it's okay to feel, and to open up to the people around me.

"Before, I was writing stuff that didn't make me think too deeply. This time it's like a one-on-one therapy session with myself."

Musically, she's more confident, too.

Rather Never Love Again features 150 layers of backing vocals that took two days "and a lot of cigarettes" to perfect; while the single Hopeless Romantic explodes with clattering flourishes of drums.

"I was like, I really want to make a wedding love song, but I don't want it to be R&B, I don't want it to feel classic," she recalls.

"And when we put all those rock drum fills in there, I was like, 'This is fun'.

"At the end of the day, I'm very much within my right to be able to experiment, to try new things, and do whatever makes me feel good."