Down the Drain and Onto the Dance Floor: Why Mike Sain't Louis Cast a Punk Blue Rat as the Hero of “La alcantarilla”

Madrid, 25 October 2026. Nobody puts a rat on a postcard. Nobody makes a cuddly toy of one. Rats get the blame for plagues, the poison in the skirting boards and the worst insult you can throw at a traitor. Mike Sain't Louis, a Madrid-based indie alternative artist who introduces himself as “the first AI singer-songwriter,” has decided they deserve better. In a new essay on his blog, he goes down into the sewers of his own invented world and introduces the creatures that live there.

The guide for that descent is “La alcantarilla” — “The Sewer” — a music video that unfolds almost entirely underground, among dirty water, masks and nightclub lights.

The other side of a colourful planet

Most people who know Mike Sain't Louis know the bright side of his work. Over roughly two years he has released 273 singles and more than 280 music videos as part of PLANETA GAYFOLK, an imaginary planet where every person can live exactly as they are. The project is told across a trilogy of albums, and its songs move from electropop to copla, from alternative pop to ballads, in Spanish and also in English, French and Portuguese. Many listeners first came across him in 2024, when “Tan Cateto” went viral on TikTok.

But the planet, he writes, isn't made only of coloured skies. It has basements, drains and tunnels too. “La alcantarilla” belongs to the second album, “Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK” — the record about wanting to escape. The video went up on YouTube on Saturday 12 July 2025, in high summer, when cities smell more than ever of what lies beneath them. It runs to three minutes and twelve seconds.

Survivors, not vermin

The essay opens with a defence. Rats, Mike Sain't Louis points out, are extraordinary survivors. They live where nothing else could, find food where everything looks like rubbish, adapt to any tunnel or pipe or dark corner. They are clever, quick, stubborn and social. “If the whole city vanished tomorrow,” he suggests, “they would probably be the last to leave.”

It's not hard to see why an artist who writes openly about queer life in Spain, liberation and mental health would be drawn to a creature the city prefers not to see. He doesn't spell out the parallel. He doesn't need to.

A yellow rat with somewhere to be

The first rat on screen is small and yellow, almost a cartoon, the colour of a canary. It scurries along the edge of an underground canal — a curved concrete tunnel with a line of water down the middle, lit by white fluorescent tubes that disappear into the distance. Beside it floats a glossy black sphere, like a giant snooker ball, and in the water there are white shapes that later turn out to be masks.

This rat doesn't hide or stop. It runs like someone who has walked the same corridor all their life. Mike Sain't Louis likes opening with it precisely because it disarms disgust. A yellow rat doesn't frighten you; it makes you curious. Where is it going? Who's waiting at the end of the tunnel? From the very first shot, he writes, the video puts us at its height, at water level, and makes us see the world the way it does.

The blue rat with the mohawk

If the video has a protagonist, it's an enormous blue rat. Electric blue fur, red eyes, a long pink tail and, on top of its head, a spiky black punk crest. It walks through a flooded brick alley, between puddles, while white theatre masks drift around it — some smiling, some sad.

This is a rat with attitude. The crest says it all: it isn't here to apologise for existing. In the artist's words, it's the rat of the urban tribes, of gigs in garages, of leather jackets and safety pins — a rat that has decided that if it's going to be despised, it may as well be despised in style.

In another shot it wades through a giant half-flooded pipe, paws soaked, masks floating past like leaves on a river. Light enters from the far end of the tunnel, white and cold, and the rat seems to be walking towards it.

Sewer or dance floor?

What strikes you first about the video is the contrast. There are scenes in concrete tunnels full of water, with rusted pipes and grates, and there are scenes in nightclubs with purple light, neon and mirror balls hanging from the ceiling, people dancing. The two worlds blend until you can't tell whether you're in a drain or on a dance floor. Running between them, like a thread, are the rats — and the masks. A great many white masks.

How it's made

Mike Sain't Louis writes all of his lyrics and handles composition, production and art direction for every track. The music and the vocal performance are generated with artificial intelligence, which he treats as a production and arranging tool, and he is upfront about that wherever his work appears. He releases everything through his own independent label, with no record company and no middlemen.

Why Irish readers might take to it

Ireland knows a thing or two about outsiders who refuse to stay quiet, and about music that thrives far from the big labels. “La alcantarilla” fits that tradition in its own odd way: an underdog anthem in which the underdog is a rodent in a mohawk. The photo with this piece, by contrast, finds the artist above ground, sitting on a rock by a mountain lake — a reminder that every tunnel in his videos eventually leads somewhere with air.

Where to listen

“La alcantarilla” and the full PLANETA GAYFOLK catalogue are free to stream and download, with lyrics, at https://mikesaintlouis.com. His music is also on Spotify, Deezer and the major platforms. The full essay (in Spanish) is on his blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/una-rata-azul-entre-mascaras-una-tuberia-con-musgo-y-un-neon-rosa-en-el-tunel-las-ratas-de-planeta-gayfolk

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is a lyricist, composer, music producer, art director and the CEO of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, based in Madrid. An indie alternative artist who calls himself “the first AI singer-songwriter,” he writes bold, uncensored, camp songs about love, heartbreak, exes, nosy neighbours and liberation. With professional support, he turns years of relationships with narcissistic partners into music, so that people living through psychological abuse feel seen and believed.

Press contact

Email: info@mikesaintlouis.com Web: https://mikesaintlouis.com Instagram: @planetagayfolk