When Alejandro Aranda, who records under the name Scarypoolparty, competed on American Idol this past spring, it was impossible to believe that he’d only been seriously playing music for a few years. Though he ultimately placed second to teen country singer Laine Hardy, he was undoubtedly the breakout star of the season — earning raves from Stevie Nicks (who said he made her cry and predicted that he’d go on “to play and sing across the great stages of the world”); his Pomona neighbor and onscreen duet partner Ben Harper; and judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, who described him as an “absolute genius” and declared his audition of original song “Out Loud” the best in Idol history. It seemed Aranda was always destined for greatness, so it was shocking to learn that he’d taken up music relatively late in life.

Aranda, whose hotly anticipated debut album Exit Form drops this week, sheepishly admits that his parents made him take piano lessons as a child, but he “hated it and didn't do it. I was a problem child.” He’s reluctant to describe himself as entirely self-taught — “because YouTube is a treasure; I feel like YouTube helped me out a bunch” — but it was only five years ago that a freak accident made him realize music was always his true calling.

“When I turned 20, I almost lost my hand,” Aranda, now age 25, reveals to Yahoo Entertainment. “I was working at a warehouse and I got my hand stuck in the conveyor belt, and I could've really lost my hand. … It got stuck in between, and then it caught my flannel shirt; I was wearing a long sleeve and it caught. If I wasn't wearing that, it would have basically ran my whole hand through it.” While Aranda was thankfully able to extricate himself from the machinery without any serious injuries, the scary situation served as a wake-up call.

“It kind of opened my eyes — like, ‘Just what exactly am I doing?’” explains Aranda. “I was struggling personally, just struggling in life. I didn't have a direction. I was working too many jobs. I was searching for something that wasn't there. And then, I just decided, ‘You know what? I've always been a lover of music, but I've never really taken it seriously.’ After that incident happened, I decided to start trying. I started playing the guitar, started playing piano, and then from then on it was nonstop, just thinking about classical music and presenting it in the way that I fell in love with music. I found that road that I was searching for, for so long.”

Fate intervened again, this time in a good way, when Aranda uploaded one of the first songs he ever wrote, recorded in a garage in Claremont, Calif., to Instagram. Aranda tagged one of his musical heroes, George Lewis Jr. — a.k.a. Warner Bros. Records esoteric indie/chillwave/funk artist Twin Shadow — and Lewis was so impressed with Aranda’s “little piano piece” that he got in contact the very next day and became Aranda’s benefactor and mentor, buying Aranda musical and recording equipment and even hiring Aranda for his touring band.

Twin Shadow’s support gave the humble Aranda the confidence he’d been lacking for so long. “When I started producing, when George gave me the laptop, I started getting that little fire,” he says. “I was like, ‘OK, I can play this arpeggio now, and I can work hard at playing this guitar piece and I can start making demos. I can start making songs.’ Early 2017 is when I started really thinking, ‘I can do this.’”

Aranda has since repaid the favor: He brought Lewis on American Idol’s top five dedication-themed episode, had Lewis co-write and produce on Exit Form, and has brought Lewis out as a support act on his own sold-out headlining tour. “He helped me out so much in the area that I was struggling with. He gave me a choice, and he gave me a chance,” says Aranda of his bond with Twin Shadow. “If there’s a way that I can pay him back for what he did, because he really did take me from nowhere to something. …I want to make sure that people know that this guy helped me out and there's people out there that do the same. There's people that care.”

Now that Aranda has found success, he’s tried to pay it forward to other friends, including one named Oscar, that helped him through the tough times when he felt like giving up on music. “Those dark moments came in waves for me,” he reflects. “There comes a point when you try something for so long, but you have to stabilize a living. I knew I needed to pay bills and responsibilities came higher, and I would have to put music on the back burner. ... I didn't know what to do. I was like, ‘I don't have a place to stay, I have no money for rent.’ This one guy that's on my crew, Oscar, is an assistant now on this tour we're on, but I stayed at his house for the majority of the time. I slept on the floor. He helped me out in ways that he would never speak of.”