It's a good time to be Kelsea Ballerini. When she caught up with The Boot backstage at Country Jam 2019 in Grand Junction, Colo., on Friday (June 14), the country star was celebrating her fifth No. 1 song, "Miss Me More," which topped the charts that week.

"Things are good, yeah ... Things are good," Ballerini said with a smile. "This week's a celebration week, for sure."

But, Ballerini's also been looking ahead -- specifically, to her third studio album. Previously, she's shared that she's been writing with pop artists Ed Sheeran, Ryan Tedder and Julia Michaels, but at Country Jam, Ballerini added two more names to that list: Lauv and Jon Bellion. Although she was tight-lipped about specifics, Ballerini did say that none of those songs will be her first single from the project.

"It's just been so cool to get in the room with people who have an artist perspective because it just adds a different energy into the song. They're thinking about how it's going to translate onstage, too," Ballerini explains, "and so there's a lot of those kind of collaborative artist writes on the record that I'm really excited about, that I think just adds a different flavor than I've gotten to share before."

The first single itself, meanwhile, is "comin' in hot," Ballerini says; a music video will come with it. She adds that, after releasing the "very progressive" "Miss Me More" and "This Feeling," her collaboration with the Chainsmokers, she's ready to "bring it back for a minute."

"I need people to remember I'm a country music artist; that's where my heart is," Ballerini shares. "Writing for the next project has been ... I've just been digging and just trying to figure out how I'm really feeling, what's really going on as a 25-year-old woman in this crazy world, so it's a lot more vulnerable than I think I've put out before."

Modern Country Music's Female Trailblazers

More From TheBoot