But before she went on air last Monday at 10 a.m., the KEXP radio host felt exceptionally nervous. Some of that was excitement about interviewing Brittany Howard, the Grammy-winning solo musician and former lead vocalist/guitarist of the rock band Alabama Shakes, who Waters believes will be a “legend one day.”

Most of Waters’ unease, however, centered on the news she’d have to share with listeners. She hadn’t been vacationing somewhere for three weeks. She’d been recovering from a surgery to remove a cancerous growth from her tongue as well as 36 lymph nodes in her neck. She would soon have to go off the air again for weeks of radiation.

“I knew in my heart that the listeners would embrace [me], but it felt vulnerable and scary,” Waters says, sitting in a vacant, dimly lit studio at KEXP on a recent morning ahead of her show.

In the silence of the soundproofed studio, as well as on the mic, Waters’ S’s and T’s land with a slight lisp, a consequence of the surgery, which “cut out a chunk” of her tongue, as she puts it. She hopes her altered speech will be temporary, with the help of a speech therapist.