Colbie Caillat has left the sunny skies of California for the hills of Tennessee. The pop-folk singer talks exclusively with Taste of Country about her recent move to Nashville and new album, Malibu Sessions.

Caillat and fiance Justin Young moved to Nashville in the fall of 2016 after visiting the city numerous times for work and looking for a new location to live.

"I just felt like I know the city now, it's beautiful there, I have friends there, we could do work there in the middle of everything," Caillat says. "So it was the perfect place to try somewhere new."

She’s already collaborated with the likes of Trace Adkins and Jerrod Niemann in the past and is open to more in the future.

"I've actually already had the great opportunity of working with so many different country artists over the past few years out in Nashville," she says, adding that she’s excited to see them more often now that she’s local. "Who knows what collaborations come about." While she has no plans to go country anytime soon, she does admit a part of her sound reaches into the genre. "I do write a lot of folky songs naturally," she says.

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The California-raised singer recently released her new album Malibu Sessions, the follow-up to 2014’s Gypsy Heart that features the hit "Try."

"I was inspired for this album by classic rock, it's what I was raised listening to," the "Bubbly" singer says, citing Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac as favorite artists growing up. The album was recorded over two months at a beach house in her native Malibu, a positive experience for the singer.

"It was such a relaxing process to record this record," she says, revealing that she wrote a whopping 60 songs, but managed to narrow it down to 15 for the album.

A new album and the move to Nashville aren’t the only big changes in her life. Caillat also started her own independent label in 2016 called PlummyLou Records after leaving her deal with Republic Records. Malibu Sessions is the first release on her new label, a venture that threw her into the entire album-making process from the music to the merchandise.

"It's been an exhausting process, but it's so rewarding…every single part of the process I was in charge of and designed," she says of releasing an album independently. "It was really a fun process when it all came together. It just felt like the right time for it."

Caillat says she’s taking a break from her own music for a while but is "always going to be writing," whether for herself or another artist. "I like the unknown," she says.

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