Braison Cyrus Talks Having Sister Miley Cyrus on New Song ‘Know This’ (Exclusive)

They say that good things take time. But great things? They can happen in just four hours if you’re Miley and Braison Cyrus.

That’s all the time it took for Miley to hop on her brother Braison’s folksy new single “Know This” (out now), he tells PEOPLE.

“She was like, ‘Oh yeah, I just went out and did it. Use whatever of this you want,’” he recalls. “Her boyfriend Maxx [Morando] vocal produced for her in L.A. It was just kind of a, ‘let’s see’ kind of thing, and then she liked it and thought it was fun.”

The new song marks a big leap into the spotlight for Braison, 31, who grew up in the public eye as part of the Cyrus family, but who has worked largely behind the scenes since the release of his 2021 debut album Javelina, writing and producing music for other artists including his sister Noah Cyrus and dad Billy Ray Cyrus.

“I think I just didn’t want to put myself front and center until I’m like, ‘This is the guy I’m going to be for the rest of my life,’” he explains. “I think there’s little baby steps that I’m taking to be more comfortable sharing things with relationships or music and what it means.”

“Know This,” which follows the singles “Here in the Middle” and “From Now On,” is a poignant reflection on the different stages of his life, from his Tennessee upbringing and stopover in Los Angeles to his current home in Nashville, where he lives with his wife Stella and their 4-year-old son Bear.

“Where I grew up in Franklin could not be more different than L.A., but the song is kind of about both,” he says. “It’s kind of like, ‘This place didn’t have what I want. This place didn’t have what I want. This palace didn’t have what I want. What do I want?’ It’s about these two very different places, but none of them were really what I was looking for.”

So, has Braison found what he’s looking for?

“Not to go full Lifetime, Hallmark on you, but the people are what make the place,” he says. “So people-wise, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

The track is part of what will eventually be a full-length album, which he recorded between May and September 2024. Braison says he had the entire record written when someone suggested he might want to add something a bit more upbeat — and thus “Know This” was born.

As for getting Miley, 32, on board, Braison says he felt something was missing after he finished recording the track.

“I basically just said I want a badass female vocal on it, and I was sitting there trying to think of people,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Okay, maybe Ashley McBryde,’ whoever. And then [co-producer Ryan Rasmussen] and I both, literally at the exact same time, were like, ‘I should ask Miley.’”

The “Flowers” singer hadn’t yet heard the track, but Braison sent it over, and four hours later, she sent back a folder of everything she’d done, which meshed together seamlessly with the recording that Braison already had.

“I love this song. Me and Miley did it together, and it’s so cool,” he says. “Having Miley’s powerful voice on it, it makes everything else about it make sense.”

Braison says that when he began writing his upcoming album, there were several instances where he wrote thinking he’d hand the songs off to other artists like Noah, who recorded his song “Don’t Put It All on Me” for her most recent album.

But the more he kept trying to cut his songs down to tailor them to others, he realized they were becoming more and more his own.

“I wrote another song and I was like, ‘Okay, now this one is going to be great. Noah’s going to love it.’ And then I kept tweaking it and kept tweaking it and I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s just turning into another thing for me,’” he says. “I realized that the reason I probably didn’t want to give them away is because I think each song is about a specific relationship in my life, my past, whatever. For an introverted person like me to hyper-focus and analyze all the relationships in your life, it doesn’t sound like it to some people, but for me, it’s a life-changing experience to place that much significance on the relationships that I have, and what I can learn from the past ones, too.”

Braison praises Stella, whom he married in 2019, as well as his siblings, friends and collaborators with helping ease him out of his comfort zone, saying his inner circle keeps him “grounded, safe and consistent.”

He says that he doesn’t have an album release date yet, as he wants to let each of his singles have their own moment in the spotlight, but is thrilled with the result.

“I want to give this song as much room to breathe and as much room to grow as humanly possible,” he says. “I don’t think there was really one specific direction I wanted it to go in. I feel like I just kept being like, ‘Add something new. Add something new. Add something new.’ And so it kind of resulted in something where we were like, ‘It’s done.’ We’ve put so much stuff in there, and so many different layers of stuff, that it just kind of ended up all meshing together.”