Cage the Elephant has scored a massive hit with “Come a Little Closer,” the first single from their latest release, Melophobia. Frontman Matt Shultz says the track was inspired by a recent trip to Brazil, when he looked out his hotel window to marvel at the favelas, shanty towns most commonly located in urban areas.

“From a distance it almost looked like an anthill or like an intricate system of burrows, but then I started thinking…there’s souls in these rooms, you know,” he tells ABC News Radio. “Love and loss and heartache and joy and hope. That’s kind of where the concept of coming closer to better see an object or whatever.”

Shultz adds he makes it a habit to write songs based on personal experiences, mostly so he can feel a stronger connection to the songs.  “I think you always have to pull from your own life,” he explains. “Whether you’re creating a, a fictional character or if it’s like a first-person kind of song, I feel like a fictional character isn’t believable unless most of it’s real. And so it’s definitely true stories, but I do look for characters or voices.” (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)

Cage the Elephant has just released an animated video for “Come a Little Closer,” which can be streamed via the group’s YouTube channel. The four-minute clip features the band entering an animated world where Shultz battles a variety of monsters, which were created from the singer’s own artwork.