Elle King Reveals She & Partner Dan Tooker Have Reconciled for Son After Split: ‘Worth Wiping a Slate Clean’ (Exclusive)

Elle King and Dan Tooker are giving their relationship another shot.

“We’re back together,” the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, 35, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

King met Tooker, 33, a tattoo artist, when she stopped by his shop for some new ink in 2019. The pair got engaged in October 2020 and welcomed their son Lucky in September 2021. But the “Ex’s & Oh’s” singer all but confirmed they had separated in April 2023, when she hit the stage at the Stagecoach music festival in Indio, Calif., wearing a jacket emblazoned with the word “single” on her back.

“We had to grow,” King — who will release her new single “High Road” on Friday, Sept. 20 — says of her reconciliation with Tooker. “I don’t know. I’ll try anything twice.”

The “Drunk (and I Don’t Want to Go Home)” singer says she and Tooker recommitted to their relationship for Lucky.

“He’s definitely brought me and his dad back together just because, what are we doing?” King says. “We have everything that both of us have ever wanted right here. Let’s put our weapons down. Come on. This is it. This is life. It doesn’t get better than this. This is worth trying. This is worth wiping a slate clean. This is worth all the effort in the world. My family, this is what deserves all the energy and effort.”

King — who is putting the finishing touches on her next album, a follow-up to her 2023 country record Come Get Your Wife — is currently on the road for her Baby Daddy’s Weekend Tour. But home base is in the Nashville area, where King and Tooker recently upgraded their digs.

“We’re starting fresh. We just bought a really gorgeous new house in the mountains of Nashville,” she says. “It’s happy, it’s beautiful. I’m very happy, I’m very content, which is nice, and I don’t know if I’ve ever really felt that, so it’s a blessing.”

Last year, King opened up to PEOPLE about her tattoo shop meet-cute with Tooker.

“There was this electric thing that I’ve never felt before,” King told PEOPLE at the time. “We hung out, laughed, then he tattooed me, and I posted a picture and said, ‘Getting tattooed by my next ex-husband.’ We’ve been in love ever since.”

At the time, King also contemplated why their relationship was stronger than past romances. She joked she needed to “get a man with a job!” before, more seriously, adding: “What I learned from all of my relationships is that maybe most of it really had nothing to do with them. We’re magnets. Why was I attracting them? Why was I allowing these things in my life? Why was I deficient in self-confidence? … I’ve changed a lot.”

For more on Elle King, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.