Heart's Ann Wilson Prepares for Her Solo Moment — and Clears Up Rumors of a Feud with Nancy

After years of sharing the stage as a member of Heart, Ann Wilson is ready for a spotlight all her own.

As Wilson, 71, prepares for the release of her upcoming solo album Fierce Bliss, out April 29, she's quick to note that seeing her sans her bandmates, including younger sister Nancy, 68, will be something of an adjustment for longtime fans — but it's one she's keen to make.

"It's challenging, because I know that it's hard for people to change," Wilson tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "When they see me, they go, 'Oh, well, that's the lead singer for Heart. Where's Nancy?' It's difficult to gain credibility as a solo [artist], and she's experiencing that too"

Though Fierce Bliss is Wilson's third solo record, it's her first to contain mostly original material, and features assists from stars like Vince Gill and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

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"I was given incredible support, and you can really hear it," she says of the record, which was recorded with the Amazing Dawgs band in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

The rocker says she's "really excited" to tour the record ("That's when I'm truly myself," she says of being onstage), but also emphasizes that because she's flexing her solo muscles doesn't mean that Heart is no more.

In fact, Wilson says she'll soon turn her focus to celebrating the 50th anniversary of the band she joined in the early 1970s —and that any notion that she and Nancy, who released a solo album of her own last year, are anything but close is simply untrue.

"[Taking time apart] allows us to bring stuff back to Heart that we didn't have before," she says. "We love each other. She and I really look forward to smooth sailing."

The sisters' relationship was briefly fractured in 2016, when Wilson's husband Dean Wetter assaulted Nancy's then-16-year-old sons during a Heart show, after the boys reportedly left a tour bus door open. (Wetter pleaded guilty to two non-felony assault charges.)

By 2019, however, the sisters Wilson had mended fences, and toured together as Heart once more.

"There seems to be this mistaken myth that Nancy and I are at each other's throats all the time," Wilson says. "That's really not the case. We're family, and we'll always be sisters. Things happen inside of families, and then you figure them out."

With any tension now just water under the bridge, Wilson, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 as a member of Heart, is still in her element.

"Back when I started, I didn't even believe I'd live to be 30. In your early 20s, you just go, 'I'll never get old.' I never dreamed it would go on 50 years," she says. "For me, it's the bomb. When it's all going right, there's nothing like it."