According to Telegraph.co.uk, it's been half a year since ALISON KRAUSS and ROBERT PLANT are known to have made any progress on a follow-up album to their successful and Grammy-winning Raising Sand album.

The female half of that collaboration is now busy with some of her own projects apart from Plant. Over the past few days, she's been recording a new album with her band UNION STATION, and she appeared with that group and BRAD PAISLEY at the White House last night as President Obama saluted country music. She also has a new collection coming out for the British market, The Essential Alison Krauss.

Aside from all of this, she is also now talking once again about her upcoming work with Plant. In what is so far the most telling statement made of their sophomore album, Krauss tells the Telegraph, "It'll be different, as if we hadn't made the first."

"I love being in the world of the unknown," she also says.

Paul Sexton writes that the two have had "listening meetings about potential material."

In January, two weeks before picking up an onslaught of awards at the Grammys, they made their presence in a Nashville studio known in an interview on British radio, during which Krauss said they were "in pre-production."