The artist who left every face out: a profile of Mike Sain't Louis, through the one video where nobody appears

Madrid, October 25, 2026. — Most of Mike Sain't Louis's music videos are crowded. A bullfighter, a drag performer, a man in a suit on a rooftop, a couple kissing, a sleeping chihuahua. Then there is “Lai”: three minutes and forty-three seconds in which not a single face appears. Objects, landscapes, light, shadows and, near the end, a pair of hands. Nothing else.

It is an odd place to start a profile of an artist. It may also be the most honest one, because the absence says a great deal about how Mike works.

A writer who directs

Mike Sain't Louis is an indie alternative artist based in Madrid who presents himself as “the first AI singer-songwriter”. The label is precise. He writes every one of his lyrics. The music and the vocal performance are generated with artificial intelligence, which he uses as a production and arranging tool; he does not sing, and the voice you hear is AI-generated. The words, the ideas and the artistic direction are his.

He is also a composer and music producer, artistic director and CEO of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. There is no record company behind him and no middlemen. In roughly two years, which he is quick to point out was not fast, he has released 273 singles and more than 280 music videos under the name PLANETA GAYFOLK. Many listeners found him in 2024, when “Tan Cateto” went viral on TikTok.

The project is organized as a trilogy meant to be heard as a single journey: “Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK”, “Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK” and “El día de la liberación”, the voyage to a planet where everyone can live exactly as they are. “Lai” belongs to the third album. He uploaded the video to YouTube on November 8, 2025, a Saturday night in Madrid.

Watching his own work, frame by frame

In a new post on his blog, Mike went back to the clip and paused it every few seconds. That habit alone is revealing. He describes what is on screen and then, separately, what he reads into it, keeping the two apart the way a careful critic would.

At first glance, he admits, the video looks like a string of pretty postcards with no order. Watched slowly, it has a clear route, from inside to outside: a title card over dunes, a lavender field, a room full of toys, and then back into the open air, down to the shoreline and a meadow with a balloon.

The opening frame sets the rules. Three huge fuchsia letters, “LAI”, his name in yellow beneath them, and behind them soft dunes in pink and lilac, “as if someone had dyed a desert with strawberry juice”. Between the letters floats a large soap bubble with the usual rainbow sheen. Inside it, a reflection draws a white curve that looks like a smile. “The video starts smiling without anyone there to smile,” he writes.

The bubble returns several times, over the dunes, over a sea of crumpled pink silk, always suspended, never bursting. Mike calls this the first rule of the video: here, nothing breaks.

Respecting an absence

Then comes the first real setting: a dirt path between rows of lavender in bloom, the sun low on the horizon. In the middle of the path, standing on its kickstand, a pinkish-white step-through bicycle of the old kind. Nobody is riding it. Nobody is nearby. Later the same field returns with a second bicycle, this one fuchsia, also parked, also alone.

Mike's reading is gentle. The video starts by showing the place where someone has been playing, not the person playing. The parked bike is proof that a child is around somewhere, maybe lying in the lavender, maybe indoors having a snack. “The camera respects that absence. It doesn't go looking.”

That phrase could stand as a description of the man. For an artist whose catalogue is often loud, explicit and very funny, there is a strong instinct for discretion when something matters.

The third setting breaks the mood on purpose: a city street at night after the rain, shining asphalt, lit shop windows, and metallic spheres of different sizes, teal, garnet, a huge golden one in the foreground, hanging like ornaments from an invisible giant tree. The street appears three times; by the second visit the spheres have dropped to the ground like marbles let loose downhill.

The loud side and the quiet side

It would be easy to profile Mike Sain't Louis only through his comic songs, the exes, the gossiping neighbours, the camp. His style runs from electropop to copla, from alternative pop to ballad, in Spanish and also in English, French and Portuguese, and the lyrics can be explicit. That is part of the work.

But there is a purpose he has spoken about publicly. With professional help, he turns years of relationships with narcissistic partners into music, to make narcissistic and psychological abuse and its effects on mental health visible, so that people living through it feel seen and believed. “Lai” sits at the other end of that spectrum: a video where nothing is threatened, nothing pops, nobody is exposed.

Why Canadian audiences might connect

In a country that lives between English and French, an artist whose catalogue already moves between languages feels familiar. “Lai”, in particular, needs no translation at all: a bicycle in a field, a bubble, a balloon. It is a good door into an artist whose more talkative songs reward a closer listen.

Listen and download

All of Mike Sain't Louis's music is free to stream and download, with the lyrics of every song, at https://mikesaintlouis.com. It is also on Spotify, Deezer and the major platforms. His full scene-by-scene reading, in Spanish, is on his blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/una-bicicleta-entre-lavandas-y-un-globo-dorado-el-videoclip-de-lai-escena-a-escena

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis writes the words and directs everything else. A Madrid-based indie alternative artist and self-described “first AI singer-songwriter”, he runs his own label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, and has spent about two years building PLANETA GAYFOLK, an unapologetic queer pop universe about love, heartbreak, ex-boyfriends, nosy neighbours, queer life in Spain, liberation and mental health.

Media contact

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