Literal is the name of the game where the new video for Shawn Mendes' latest single "In My Blood" — released Tuesday (April 24) — is concerned.

The project, the first from Mendes' forthcoming third studio album (you can read all about his next LP here), finds the Canadian pop star — as his lyrics would suggest — lying on a bathroom floor, aiming to survive a series of dangers that suddenly swarm him. First, rocks tumble down around him, narrowly missing him. Then a snowstorm sweeps him up, and after a final rainstorm, the sun seems to peek through the clouds and relieve him of the many plagues.

"Help me, it's like the walls are caving in / Sometimes I feel like giving up / No medicine is strong enough / Someone help me," he cries, building up to the Kings of Leon-inspired chorus.

Mendes told Beats 1's Zane Lowe that the song isn't about a particular experience, or something he even registers as negative or a cry for help. Rather, it's a more general statement about anxiety. "The only way we're going to step up...and get better...is if it's more honest. Like, how raw can we get?" he said.

And that tone will be consistent through the album, which he said will borrow from a variety of themes, eras and sounds.

"I didn't put any walls up for my genre," Mendes told Valentine in the Morning. "I just made music."

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