Track of the Week:
Jesus The Dinosaur,
“Empty Space”
Boston indie-folk quintet finds peace in the places only they can reach.
There is a particular kind of relief that comes from finding a place, real or imagined, where the world cannot follow you. Tommy Ng has been searching for that place most of their life. On “Empty Space,” the new single from Boston indie-folk band Jesus The Dinosaur, Ng has finally mapped it out in sound.
Released April 17 2026 on all major platforms except Spotify, “Empty Space” is the second single from the band’s forthcoming debut album, Nothing To The Branches, due May 15 2026. Where last month’s “Sweet Nothing” dragged the listener through the exhaustion of social overstimulation, this song goes the other direction entirely. It is an invitation. A breath held and then slowly released.
“The lyrics are about spending time alone, and doing your own thing,” Ng says. “When I was a kid, this desire manifested itself as a fantasy about a special place that was somehow completely separate from the world, where time didn’t exist, and that only I could access.” Tommy’s voice soars smoothly over a bed of acoustic guitar giving an open feeling of a safe introspective space in the song, but also reminds the listener of the well crafted melodic hits that R.E.M. and Michael Stipe shared with the world in their heyday.
That specificity is what makes the song work. This is not a vague plea for rest. It is a detailed emotional address, and Ng delivers it with the kind of quiet precision that only comes from years of sitting with a feeling before trying to name it.
Jesus The Dinosaur started as a solo project for Ng, releasing singles and EPs over the past dozen years and earning a Boston Music Award nomination in the Folk Artist of the Year category along the way. The current five-piece lineup, rounded out by Hannah Foxman on electric guitar and vocals, J Kimball on electric guitar, Bradley Robertson on electric bass and vocals, and Jamie Rowe on drums and percussion, has sharpened everything Ng was already doing well. The arrangements breathe. The harmonies land with weight. The band plays like people who genuinely like being in the same room together.
Rowe produced, engineered, and mixed “Empty Space” at Rare Signals in Cambridge and The Record Co. in Boston, with additional engineering by Brian Charles at Rare Signals. Ian Farmer mastered it at The Metal Shop in Philadelphia. The production has a warm, lived-in quality that matches the lyrical content. Nothing here feels forced or overworked.
Rowe also found a sonic detail worth noting. At a backyard show, friend and audio engineer Otto Klammer threw a long delay on Ng’s voice right as they sang the word “infinity.” Rowe borrowed it directly for the mix. You can hear it at the tail end of the fade out if you listen for it. It is the kind of small choice that turns a good song into a memorable one.
“Sometimes we’ll jam for a while and everyone can kind of find their own loops and offset things to play with the ‘infinity’ vibe,” Rowe says. “Which informed the decision to end it with a fade out on the record.”
The song first emerged as part of a submission for Four by Four Vol. 1, a four-track tape compilation put together with Sami Martasian of Puppy Problems to raise funds for local non-profit Warm Up Boston. It has since become a live favorite. Ng describes it as having “windows-open vibes, some levity,” and that reads accurately. This is a spring song in the truest sense. Not the anxious, everything-is-new kind of spring. The kind where you sit on a porch and feel, for a moment, like nothing urgent is required of you.
The band has made a deliberate choice to keep “Empty Space” and all of Nothing To The Branches off Spotify. Guitarist J Kimball was direct about the reasons, citing the platform’s ICE recruitment advertising, founder Daniel Ek’s investments in AI warfare and surveillance technology, the flooding of AI-generated content onto the platform, and its historically low royalty rates. It is a principled stance, and it fits the band’s overall sensibility. Jesus The Dinosaur is not interested in playing by rules that do not serve the people making the music.
Nothing To The Branches arrives May 15 2026. If “Empty Space” is any indication of what the album carries, it will be worth the wait. You can catch Jesus The Dinosaur live April 24 at The Lilypad in Cambridge and May 8 at Warehouse XI in Somerville.
Find them on Bandcamp, Instagram, and Facebook. For booking and press, reach out to michael@knyvet.com.