LITTLE ROCK ROCK

The band Ho-Hum won’t even release its debut album until May 21, but it’s already gotten fan mail.

And what a fan!

President Clinton, a former resident of the band’s hometown of Little Rock, Ark., recently sent the group’s manager, Paul Lovett, a note on White House letterhead expressing his support, with a handwritten note that he’s “looking forward to listening to the tape” of the album, “Local,” which will be released by MCA’s new Universal Records label.

The endorsement, it turns out, is due in part to the fact that Lovett’s sister was a friend of Clinton’s when they were growing up near the town of Hope, Ark. And there’s more to the White House ties: In the early ‘90s, right around the time then-Gov. Clinton announced he was running for president, Ho-Hum bassist Rod Bryan’s day job was as an assistant at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, where one of the partners was Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bryan even got grilled by a pair of FBI agents as part of the Whitewater investigation.

Bryan, though, has mixed feelings about the Clinton connections.

“For exposure, it’s a good thing,” he says. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with the music.”

And he certainly wants to dismiss any notion that their record deal had anything to do with political clout, as some perceive the record contract awarded First Brother Roger Clinton.