Wrabel on His Powerful Anthem 'The Village' and Working with Kesha on Her New Music: 'I've Never Seen Her So Happy'

Wrabel is using his vocal talents to take a stand for the  LGBTQ community.

The singer and veteran songwriter, who has written for artists like Adam Lambert and Ellie Goulding, depicts the daily struggles of a trans teen through his powerful song and music video “The Village,” which also features trans actor August Aiden.

“I’ve never worked on anything where everyone is so passionate about it,” Wrabel, 28, tells PEOPLE. “The response has been the most overwhelming thing that has happened from anything I have released.”

Wrabel (né Stephen Wrabel) wrote the song the day after President Donald Trump removed federal protections for transgender students in public schools in February, and he immediately thought of two of his biggest fans who are trans teenagers.

“It broke my heart,” he says. “I was on my way to the studio and I sat down with two of my good friends and said, ‘Can we try to write something for these two kids?’ I sent it to them and my managers and they agreed that I needed to put it out.”

Not only did those two fans inspire the track, but they also inspired him to reflect on his own journey to self-acceptance.

“I came out at 23,” he says. “I grew up in an Evangelical born-again church and had a lot of really twisted beliefs about myself and my own sexuality and salvation.”

“It was a really traumatic and defining time in my life,” he continues. “One of the things that struck me about these kids was that they’re so young and they’re so themselves. When I was their age, I was wasted or was on some kind of drug trying to get out of my own head because I was scared to even look at myself in the mirror.”

While filming the music video for the track, trans rights took another blow in July when President Trump announced in a series of tweets a sweeping ban on transgender people serving in the military.

“The trans military ban tweet happened the morning we were doing pick-up shots for the opening scene,” he says. “It was kind of eerie — we showed up on set before noon and we were all just like, ‘Holy s—, we have to put this out tomorrow.'”

He adds: “We felt like people needed it so we put a big rush on it. We were all in tears, it was very surreal.”

When Wrabel is in need of support during difficult times in his own life, he turns to none other than his friend and frequent collaborator Kesha.

“I don’t know if she’s my sister or my wife or my mom,” Wrabel says with a laugh. “When I went out on tour for the first time last year and put out my first song, she was my first call on a lot of hard nights.”

The pair met in the studio three years ago where they wrote their first song together titled “Emotional.”

“We became fast friends,” he says. “We just started talking, and it immediately turned into a therapy session on a hammock in my friend’s backyard. She is just a wonderful, beautiful person and that sounds so cliché but she is.”

Wrabel also penned the female-empowerment anthem “Woman” off of Kesha’s new album Rainbow with her, and he says the star is happier now than she has ever been.

This album has marked a triumphant return for the singer, as it has been five years since Kesha released Warrior. She spent the years in between in and out of courtrooms, locked in a bitter battle with her producer and label head Dr. Luke and his Kemosabe Records imprint. With several suits flying between all sides, that case is still ongoing.

“Outside of having anything to do with writing it, it has just been amazing to see how happy she is and how much she cares about this record and her fans,” Wrabel says. “It’s amazing that she put out this record that’s really her. She’s singing her face off and people are loving it, and I feel like people are loving her almost for the first time.”