I Pressed Play on a Rainy Night and Ended Up Floating: Four Minutes Inside Mike Sain't Louis' “Drift Away”

Madrid, October 25, 2026. It was raining when I opened “Drift Away,” which turned out to be the wrong weather and exactly the right mood. The track is part of PLANETA GAYFOLK, the sprawling project of Mike Sain't Louis, a Madrid-based indie alternative artist who introduces himself as “the first AI singer-songwriter.” I had been told it was the quietest thing in his catalog. After four minutes and forty-one seconds, I believe it.

Some context before the water. Mike Sain't Louis writes every lyric, composes and produces each track, and directs the art behind it. The music and the vocal performance are generated with artificial intelligence, a tool he uses for production and arrangement, and he says so plainly every time. Over roughly two years he has released 273 singles and more than 280 music videos under his own independent label, with no record company in between. A lot of people first found him in 2024, when “Tan Cateto” went viral on TikTok.

“Drift Away” came out on Friday, August 15, 2025, in the middle of summer. It belongs to the second album of his GAYFOLK trilogy, the one titled “Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK” — roughly, “If only you could travel to GAYFOLK.” The lyrics have not been published yet, so what follows is what I saw and heard, guided by an essay the artist just posted on his blog about the waves in this video.

The word that changed meaning

In that essay, Mike Sain't Louis admits he has always loved the English word drift: to let the current carry you, to stop rowing against everything. For a long time, he writes, he would have translated it as defeat. “Today I translate it as rest.”

That single shift explains the whole video. There are no cities here, no hallways, no machines. Just sea, light, and a handful of people who wade in or watch from the sand. It is, by his own account, the most serene clip he has made, made at a time when he needed, quite literally, to breathe.

Ten seconds in: a wave with no audience

The first image is a small wave breaking on water so turquoise it looks invented. The foam opens in a thin white line; behind it, the sky goes pink. Nobody is there.

I kept waiting for a person to walk into frame. None did, and that is the point. “The sea exists before us and will go on existing after,” the artist writes. That first wave doesn't need anyone to watch it. It breaks the same either way.

He connects it to something personal: years spent living under other people's gaze, every gesture needing approval. The empty wave, he says, reminds him that some things are beautiful without witnesses — and that he can be, too. Sitting there with the rain tapping on my window, it was hard not to take that personally.

Forty-seven seconds: the hands

Then comes the shot I have rewound the most. Two hands rest on a white surfboard, fingers spread, turquoise water all around. No face, no body, just hands holding on.

It's the instant before paddling out, the moment you decide to go in. Mike Sain't Louis writes that he thought about this image a lot when he started therapy. The first time he sat across from his psychologist, his hands looked exactly like that: open, tense, braced on his knees as if they could hold him up if everything sank. “A face can pretend,” he writes. “Hands almost never can.”

It is a striking admission to tuck inside a music video essay, and it's consistent with the rest of his work. With professional help, he turns years of relationships with narcissistic partners into songs, so that people who have lived through psychological abuse feel seen and believed. “Drift Away” doesn't shout any of that. It just shows two hands deciding to let go of the shore.

Fifty-seven seconds: above the clouds

The camera climbs. Suddenly we are over the clouds, an enormous sun reflected on a golden sea, dark islands peeking through the haze. After the intimacy of the hands, the scale opens wide. The song keeps its unhurried pace; like the tide, it comes and goes and is in no rush to reach a chorus.

Why it lands here

American listeners have a long relationship with the ocean as an escape — surf records, road trips that end at the Pacific, the beach as the place you go when the city gets too loud. “Drift Away” speaks that language, but it comes from somewhere else: a queer artist in Madrid building an imaginary planet where people can live as they are. If you know his more irreverent work — the camp humor, the uncensored lyrics about exes and nosy neighbors — this is the other side of the coin. Same planet, low tide.

The photo that runs with this piece shows him on a wet curb at night under red neon, which is about as far from turquoise water as you can get. It felt right to me anyway. Most of us press play on songs like this from somewhere just like that.

Where to listen

“Drift Away” and the rest of the PLANETA GAYFOLK catalog are free to stream and download, with lyrics where available, at https://mikesaintlouis.com. His music is also on Spotify, Deezer and the major platforms. The full essay is on his blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/una-ola-que-se-enrosca-una-tabla-de-surf-hacia-el-sol-y-siluetas-con-los-brazos-en-alto-las-olas-de-planeta-gayfolk

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is an indie alternative artist from Madrid and the self-described “first AI singer-songwriter.” He is a lyricist, composer, producer, art director and CEO of his own label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. His GAYFOLK trilogy — “Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK,” “Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK” and “El día de la liberación” — imagines a journey to a planet where everyone can live as who they are. His songs, in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese, move from electropop to copla, from alternative pop to ballads.

Press contact

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