Guster didn’t experience a transition period between when the members graduated from Tufts University and started careers as musicians.

Or, at least, it was a short one. According to Joe Pisapia, who became a part of the band five years ago, the band went straight from class to the van.

“They started jamming and all that — and when they graduated they went right into the van and started touring for a living,” he said. “They just said, ‘Let’s do this music thing and see how long we can do it,’ and here we are.”

Pisapia said he came into the band as an aid, his job being to add supplemental musical features to the songs.

“I was like ‘Oh, I can pick my way through a lot of music,'” he said. “I play guitar, but can play more instruments — I kind of dabble into this and that.”

And through almost a decade and a half of music and a new addition, Pisapia said the band has cultivated a “new era of songs.”

“The songs are melody- and song-based,” he said. “They’re based on lyrics, not rifts.”

Though he defined the songs’ aesthetic components, he said he was unable to fit the compilation into a specific genre.

“It’s folky, but it’s not rock,” he said. “Nowadays, if on MySpace or Facebook they asked what our genre is, that’d be so hard to do.”

The band has been touring around the country since September, he said, sojourning the four corners — San Diego, Seattle, Burlington and Ft. Lauderdale — and is just finishing up what Pisapia said he has christened “The Endless Summer Tour.”

“I haven’t had to put on a jacket yet,” he said. “Now we’re finishing up in the Southeast. I’m probably going to get out of this thing without ever having to bust out a jacket.”

Following the tour’s completion, Pisapia said the band is heading back to the studio during the winter and falling once again into the writing and recording phase.

“We’ve been on support of this record since March 2006,” he said. “We’ve stayed out since then. It’s a cycle, and the end of that cycle falls naturally.”

The beginning of the new cycle — writing, recording and producing — takes the band a long time, he said, because it is “very picky” about what goes on the record.

And in lieu of this fastidiousness, he said, it will be a while until the band will hit the road again.

“This is going to be one of our last shows for a long time,” Pisapia said. “This is the last chance to check us out for a while.”