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WHEN the members of dance-punk group VHS or Beta aren’t driving around in a tour van or making albums, they do some things they’ve been doing since they were young – fishing for bass and shooting clay pigeons.

“We’re totally the Dukes of Hazzard,” says singer and guitarist Craig Pfunder, 31. “I grew up on a lake, so I’ve been fishing since I was a kid. It’s nice to get back to those things when usually you’re in a nightclub.”

They also chill by shooting hoops, going to a few concerts or hitting dive bars – about the only kinds of fun available in Louisville, Ky., where VHS or Beta formed in 1997 and still resides.

The band’s third full-length album, “Bring on the Comets,” comes out today.

Hanging out in Kentucky should have been the calm before the storm. But it wasn’t. The guys have been busy rehearsing with a new guitar player, finishing a music video, getting products ready for the merch table, doing interviews and just getting their homes in order to be absent for a month.

“Everything’s been lined up, but when it hits you, it hits you all at once,” says Pfunder. “We’re dealing with so much stuff.”

And that’s their time off.

Tonight, the real challenge starts when VHS or Beta begins the second leg of its road tour in Toronto. The band performs at the Bowery Ballroom tomorrow and in Brooklyn at Studio B on Thursday.

This tour will be different from the one for the band’s last album, 2004’s “Night on Fire.” That tour lasted a laborious 17 months.

“We played everything we could,” says Pfunder, sounding exhausted just thinking about it. “With that album, we felt it was important to lay down the groundwork.”

With a following now in place, they can relax – but not much.

“Honestly, it’s about touring smarter,” says Pfunder. “We’re not snobs. We’d love to tour every small town in America, but it’s just not feasible.”

The group still travels in a van – they haven’t yet upgraded to a bus – but you won’t find them crashing on the floors of friends’ apartments this time around.

“The drives are still as long as hell,” says Pfunder. “We still drink. We’re not so smart as to let that go yet.”

With luck, the hard-won following that loves the group’s signature dance-punk vibe can evolve with the band’s enhanced sound.

For “Bring on the Comets,” the group added a little more pop and rock to its mix, which you can hear, for example, in “Can’t Believe a Single Word.” (Get the MPFree at nypost.com)

“Sonically, people have been so used to us sticking to the template of four on the floor,” he says. “That song does hit four on the floor in the chorus, but the opening doesn’t have the same house rhythm that we’ve used for so long.”

The group – which was founded by bassist Mark Palgy and guitarists Zeke Buck and Pfunder, who met after high school – has changed before. In the early years, it experimented with noise punk before finding its dance-punk-soul-house groove with the addition of drummer Mark Guidry.

Ten years later, the band, which kicked out Buck in 2005, needed to shift again. This time, they had to get the balance right – to change just so much that the fans could understand the evolution.

“I wanted to forget everything that had been written about us and what we thought about ourselves,” he says. “It was like when I sat down to write songs, I thought about what’s going to make us happy and what will come off feeling natural.

“We felt there was a certain amount of risk, but it’s paid off.” Spoken like a true Duke boy.

marymhuhn@nypost.com