Indie pop songbird Ingrid Michaelson may not be dominating Top 40 radio, but if you own a television, you’ve no doubt heard her work.

The 28-year-old Staten Island girl, who got her start playing intimate venues in NYC, managed to infiltrate the music biz when she loaned her song “Breakable” to play on the hit TV show “Grey’s Anatomy” in November 2006.

Since then, her young, angelic voice and organic-yet-quirky melodies and ballads have made her a MySpace sensation, landed her countless television appearances and led to her own solo club and theater tour. She performs at the Beaumont Club at 8 p.m. July 1, three weeks before she starts a short stint opening for the Dave Matthews Band. It’s popularity and a place in her career she still doesn’t quite grasp.

“Who can really think of things like that,” says Michaelson about opening for the Dave Matthews Band while grabbing a burrito just north of San Diego. “It’s kind of insane. I don’t know how it happened.”

It may not have happened if Michaelson hadn’t broken out of her shell.

When Michaelson self-released her 2005 album “Slow the Rain” on Cabin 24 Records, she admits that she felt confined to the “sandal-wearing” cliche of the female folk artist. She thought there were rules she had to abide by. Then she heard the album “Transatlanticism” by indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie and listened to contemporaries like Regina Spektor, which helped her discover the rules about what you can sing about and say meant nothing.

“They have such freedom,” Michaelson says. “I felt like I was so tethered to the whole singer/songwriter genre that I couldn’t sing songs about pickles or something like that.”

She took steps towards that emotional freedom with “Girls and Boys,” an album which included the single “The Way I Am.” Just like her music on “Grey’s Anatomy” got people’s attention, her infectiously simple and straightforward single wound up on a fall 2007 commercial for Old Navy. That commercial helped propel “Girls and Boys” high up the Billboard and iTunes charts.

Her taking to the television airwaves to get her music exposure instantly prompted the sell-out question, but Michaelson remains on her own independent label and controlling her commercialization.

“I think people look at TV places and commercials as something negative,” Michaelson says. “People just don’t understand that it’s the same difference, except I’m doing it on my own terms.”

With her national tour, Michaelson likes to take control on stage as well — in an interactive way. She likes to “hang out” with the audience, chatting back and forth between songs and letting her music lure them instead of blow them out.

“Usually, my audiences are really quiet and are really good listeners,” she says. “I like to have an intimate feeling even if there’s 1,500 people in the audience.”

She’s also using the road to try out new material, which she plans to record and release sometime in early 2009. She admits matters from the heart, in particular personal disaster and sadness, still bring out the best in her songwriting. But with each new song, Michaelson expands the parameters of the box she hopes to break out of.

“I don’t think I’ve reached that total freedom at this point,” she says, “but I’m getting there.”