There's still no telling when Fleetwood Mac will unveil the new music they've been working on since Christine McVie returned to the fold, but Lindsey Buckingham promises it'll be well worth the wait.

Buckingham opened up a bit about the band's latest creative journey during a discussion with the Wall Street Journal, revealing that since Stevie Nicks was indisposed while working on her new '24 Karat Gold' album, he and McVie got started on their own material.

"Christine and I were able to concentrate on each other," he explained. "We were exploring some new turf. That became enlightening to me."

And although the group's current world tour -- which will continue on into 2015 -- kept them from finishing their efforts, Buckingham isn't concerned about whether the new music will see the light of day. "We never envisioned finishing the album in the short term," he pointed out. "We set it aside. Stevie will come in and participate. I have material I had been working on. There’s no danger that it will slip between the tracks. It’s too profound to."

In the meantime, fans can only wonder what the next Fleetwood Mac record will sound like. But while Buckingham hinted that he took "massive liberties" with McVie's piano-vocal demos, he also seemed to signal that the end result won't be all that dissimilar from the group's classic sound. "It’s a very interesting thing when someone who helped to define the interaction leaves for that amount of time," he mused of McVie's return. "You don’t know how it’s going to play out. But this something that feels really good. It feels really circular."

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