After seven different releases of its debut album, you’d think orchestral country-folk group Hem would have given up on music.

But the band hasn’t, and a few false starts only paved the way for its current prolificacy.

Hem will be performing tonight at the Knitting Factory, wrapping up promotion of its third full-length album, “No Word from Tom,” and giving audiences a taste of its forthcoming September release.

Quite impressive for a band that relied on an advertisement in The Village Voice to find a singer.

“Hem was always a dream project. It was always what I was going to do once I started my life,” songwriter Dan Messe said. “I was always waiting for a place to begin. Then I had one really bad year where I lost everything and said that my life is going to begin now.”

And indeed it did. Teaming up with Gary Maurer, Steve Curtis and Sally Ellyson, the one and only captivating voice to respond to the ad, Hem released “Rabbit Songs” in 2001.

The album was later picked up by Dreamworks Records in 2003 but the label collapsed, leaving the band with possession of its music and not much else.

The music, though, was enough.

Most of the band’s material begins with a foundation of simple repetitious themes, like lightly descending piano triplets or an unfolding guitar lick. Then the instrumentation begins to layer over the top, creating a sound that is lush, emotional and utterly beautiful.

It’s what Messe describes as “very arranged orchestral chamber folk and haunted lullabies,” which when combined with Ellyson’s airy, enchanting voice come to act both as a candid purging of pain and a dreamlike escape from it.

“It’s a human need. We all suffer from the duality of being stuck in the past ... and at the same time, there’s a whole other side to it with this idea of home,” Messe said.

“Those are the things that keep me alive. If there was one theme in all our music it’s trying to find comfort ... and for me that’s the most important (element) that songs have – the ability to comfort.”

“No Word from Tom” is like a follow up to the band’s 2004 EP “Birds, Beasts & Flowers,” which was recorded in collaboration with the Autumn Defense. Both the EP and the new release compile demos of unreleased tracks as well as covers and live versions of older songs, allowing fans to see how much the songs can change from the studio to the stage.

The band translates the songs’ comforting quality to its performances but the new versions often adopt a fresh appeal due both to the organic evolution of the musical themes and lyrics as well as the changing ensemble onstage.

“It’s a way for us to experiment with sounds and the studio and new ways of recording, and also a way to play around without the pressure of a release ... and we just fell in love with the process (while recording the EP),” Messe said.

“We just wanted to open up our process to people – how arrangements change over time, how songs change over time.”

The perpetual alterations to the songs testify to Hem’s folk-music groundwork. But reaching back to influences that range from Copeland to Gershwin to the Carter Family and Bill Monroe, Hem also incorporates inflections from across the musical spectrum to its aesthetic, including bluegrass and a prominent orchestral element.

Together with the anecdotal, poignant lyrics, Hem has developed a sound with each album that is resilient even amid an almost swelling sadness.

“A lot of the songs are about being stuck,” Messe said. “But in writing songs we become unstuck. That’s the amazing thing about art.”

Hem’s music (as well as the story behind it) is incomparable to a lot of music released these days, which can be dangerous in an industry more focused on selling already-popularized sounds than working to pioneer new trends.

But fortunately in Hem’s case, it has instead culminated in a growing fan base, three albums with a fourth on the way, and a sound that continually thrives in the face of whatever hurdles might come its way.

“I feel that good music will always get heard. I didn’t used to trust that but now I really believe that if you do something good, people will want to hear it,” Messe said.

“(The music business aspect) doesn’t really affect us. We wall ourselves off from all the noise and just keep making music.”