Being a member of British Sea Power can be a dangerous experience.

The Brit-pop, Bowie-esque art-punks are an accident-prone, drunken fivesome, constantly pushing the limits of safety on- and off-stage. Praised by the likes of David Bowie and Radiohead, the quintet, including brothers Hamilton (bassist) and Yan (vocals, guitar), guitarist Noble, drummer Wood and Eamon (keyboards, percussion), won accolades for its lively tunes and kooky stage show.

Band members wear military jackets and camouflage to perform on a stage scattered with branches and stuffed birds. During certain songs, Eamon bangs on a marching-band bass drum, and there’s lots of risky stage-climbing and diving antics.

Some members of the band wear helmets – not just for decorative purposes, but for protection from flying guitars or a hostile crowd, Yan explains.

Eamon’s used to wear an antique fireman’s helmet, but now wears a yellow Japanese construction-worker helmet, not the WWII style everyone thought.

“The military thing was always exaggerated,” says Yan, who explains the original stylistic intent was “militant pastoralist.”

On the injury side of things, Hamilton seems to be king. When collecting branches for a show, the bassist sawed off the tree’s limb he was sitting on. He hit the ground and wounded his wrist, leading to a tour being canceled. Another time Hamilton hurt his wrist after punching a wicker deer head (a stage prop).

Noble is constantly tempting fate with his death defying acts, which go beyond his admirable stage dives.

At Coachella in the California desert last week, he climbed a 20-foot high light tower. Another time he had to be rescued by a forest ranger for tackling a 100-foot high rope walk-way.

“He was mad drunk,” says Yan. “Most people get rude or fall asleep or get silly when they drink, but Noble wants to climb. He’s got monkey blood in him.”

Even though they are constantly such silly and dangerous stunts onstage and off, Yan blames the injuries on the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne.

“He put a curse on us,” says Yan. “He’s a nice man. I don’t think he did it on purpose.”

After Coyne’s curse, Yan and Eamon both ended up on crutches halfway through their tour.

Even the seemingly harmless activity of collecting branches for decoration can be hazardous, as they discovered one time they played in New York.

“We got into some trouble,” he recalls. “We got threatened by knives in a small community park near the Bowery Ballroom.”

They’ll play it safer and stay away from collecting branches when the band coasts into the Bowery Ballroom on Saturday. It’s been a mad ride since the members emerged from the English seaside town of Brighton in 2003 with their debut disc “The Decline of the British Sea Power.”

Before their 2001 breakthrough with the post-punk single “Remember Me,” they never would have imagined getting cursed by Coyne (or opening for the Flaming Lips, the Strokes and Interpol), arguing about beer brands with tennis great John McEnroe or going bird-watching in a forest with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker.

Now the band is ready for round two. They attempted to go a new direction for their latest – more toward into the realm of heavy rock, but they couldn’t escape who they are.

They wrote the latest album in a barn in the English countryside and recorded the tunes live (instead of fussing around with separately recorded tracks) in Wales and London.

The result still has the same post-punk feel of the band’s debut with Yan’s Richard-Butler-esque vocals, but it seems to swirl a little more in a prog-pop-Spiritualized way.

Despite the surreal moments, the whirlwind tours and the injuries, Yan has one word to describe the past two years: pleasant.

Let’s hope it stays that way.