When the habitually-indolent Hum are ready to record their next album, the band will likely be in the midst of another musical revolution. It's been three years since the Champaign, Ill., quartet released its major-label debut, "You'd Prefer An Astronaut," and the band expects the public to wait another three for its follow-up to the just released "Downward is Heavenward."

\\"We're no Metallica," Hum drummer Bryan St. Pere explains. "We need to recover after touring." The problem is, in the three years since Hum released "Astronaut," the world's musical landscape has changed (again) and Hum's dense, tortoise-slow, grungy haze is about as appreciated as a White House intern with lockjaw.

\\"The 'commercially-viable' changes so fast," says Hum's headspun bassist Jeff Dimpsey. "How many genres have we gone through since [we released 'Astronaut'] -- grunge, ska -- and then we have electronica, which is almost done."

\\"And we continue to not evolve at all," adds guitarist/vocalist Matt Talbott, only half-joking.

\\Things for Hum were certainly more downward than heavenward over the past few years and laughs were at a premium. The band recorded "Heavenward" over a two-and-a-half month stretch last summer, a year after aborting its first attempt at making new music. For reasons Hum would rather keep mum, the working relationship between original producer Keith Clevesly ("You'd Prefer An Astronaut") went sour, so the group turned to Mark Rubell.

\\"There was nothing funny that happened [in the studio]," Talbott says, racking his brain for amusing in-the-studio anecdotes. Talbott, whose egghead looks are at odds with his downtrodden lyrics and sullen disposition, says he was quite depressed during and following the recording of the album and is only now beginning to appreciate the generally melancholy "Heavenward." "I wasn't happy where the band was going and scared that we weren't doing a good enough job," Talbott explains.

\\Whatever job they were doing, it was good enough to earn them a coveted appearance on the Howard Stern Show three years back, when the group performed their hit, "Stars," in the K-Rock studio. Not bad for an upstart band without a buxom bassist or hilarious physical abnormality. "Howard really liked the song 'Stars' more than he really liked the band Hum," St. Pere says. But, counters Talbott, "[at least] he didn't rip on us after we left."

\\Hum seem weary of casting the first stone at Stern, Clevesly, or each other. Like every band, the group has its arguments, but Hum have an unconventional way of silencing the lone dissenter -- give in to him. "There's not like a Billy Corgan in the band who says, 'This is the way it's gonna be. Deal with it,'" St. Pere explains.

\\"We're democratic to a fault," Dimpsey adds. "We *all* have to like it." In a nation, democracy has a nice ring, b