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On a recent morning, Kelly Zutrau is brimming with nervous energy. “I’m freaking out a little bit,” the Wet singer-songwriter says while picking out her outfit for that evening’s show in Philadelphia: a pair of bike shorts and a huge XXL T-shirt. Her anticipation is not unexpected: It is the opening performance on the band’s first proper headlining tour in more than a year. It has the 30-year-old Zutrau feeling slightly on edge. “But it’s a good feeling,” the soft-spoken singer says. “It’s exciting. It’s real.”

If Zutrau speaks of her band with a slight reticence it’s because as recently as last year it was unclear if the alt-R&B band — born out of the singer’s love of the tender R&B of ’90s acts such as Brandy SWV, as well as pop music such as Destiny’s Child and Drake — even had a future.

Only a few years ago, in the wake of its 2014 self-titled debut EP, the then-trio was one of the hottest new acts on the scene: major festival appearances, Kardashian co-signs, and praise from the New York Times and NPR all followed. And while in 2016, Wet released its proper full-length album, “Don’t You,” in the intervening years they nearly came apart at the seams. Last year, founding member Marty Suklow left the band and, for a period of time, Zutrau says she and remaining bandmate Joe Valle were struggling to maintain a healthy professional partnership. “It was a long process figuring out roles and figuring out how to move forward in a way that was fulfilling for everyone involved,” Zutrau says. “I think we got there. And it was not an easy process. Obviously things change, people left, and here we are.”

Now they’re in a good place, however. Later this summer, Wet, playing House of Blues on Friday, will release its second album, “Still Run.” Due July 13, the album, Zutrau says, is the most confident she’s ever felt about a body of work. More important for the future of the band, it’s the first Wet release that holds true to her vision for the band.

Looking back, Zutrau admits she can’t say the same for “Don’t You.”

“We were getting pulled in a lot of different directions,” she says of the flurry that followed her band being signed to Neon Gold Records, a partnership with Columbia Records, in 2013.

Zutrau had written the initial Wet songs by herself — spare meditations born out of loneliness and personal evolution, later complemented with muted guitars, spare drums, and space — but after being signed to Columbia the label began connecting her with outside producers and she suddenly felt a lack of ownership over her music. “Sometimes when you bring in other people you lose sight of your vision,” she says. “I think that happened a little bit with us. I was too young and inexperienced to know any better.

“We signed to a major label and I had no idea what I was doing,” she continues. “I had been writing songs in my bedroom and now there were lots of people involved and wanting it to be something huge. We were trying to please so many different people: our fans, the label, ourselves, our peers. It was kind of a crazy time.”

For the band’s forthcoming LP, “I really got in touch with what I wanted it to be and tried to drown out some of the noise,” Zutrau says. Having previously felt unable to fully exert her creative wherewithal, this go-round she says she viewed herself not only as the album’s chief songwriter but also its principal curator. “I wrote the songs and afterward I was putting together a team of people I thought could best execute them,” she says. Valle is “the number one person on that team” but Zutrau says “there were key moments to bring people in and I got confident in knowing when that needed to happen and knowing when to just do it on our own and trust ourselves. That just comes with time.”

To that end, Wet recruited John Hill (Rihanna, Portugal. The Man) to help produce the stunning “Lately,” as well as former Vampire Weekend member and pop-producer extraordinaire Rostam Batmanglij for two other tracks.

Zutrau and Batmanglij even lived together for a time — an experience the singer said led to several impromptu recording sessions.

“We’d just be hanging out and Rostam would go, ‘Cut a vocal right now. Your voice sounds cool!’ ” Zutrau recalls with a laugh. “I’d be like ‘But I don’t want to do that. It’s 1 in the morning and we’re at a party!’ But that’s the best thing about Rostam. He’s so spontaneous. He has such an artist’s brain.”

She and Valle also now have more clear-cut creative roles as well as an abiding trust in each other’s creative instincts. Case in point is the new single “There’s A Reason.” The song was the first time the pair ever wrote together “and it was really hard at first but it really became one of the best songs on the album,” Zutrau says. She references a specific line in the song — “There’s a reason you’re by my side again” — that directly references her and Valle’s reconciling: “It became about working together and being friends and our complicated relationship over the past 10 years.”

Now ready to hit the road again, Wet has a new lineup — four musicians now share the stage with Zutrau and Valle — but the singer says she’s just happy to be back onstage again sharing her music with the world. “That’s what’s cool about it,” she says. “You’re not in the studio, you’re not with industry people, you’re just connecting with the people that love your music.”

Dan Hyman is a freelance writer.

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