The Offspring will be playing one new, as-yet-untitled song, during its run on this summer's Unity Tour with 311.

As for the the follow-up album to 2008's "Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace," -- "It's been going slow," guitarist Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman tells Billboard.com. "We started recording awhile ago. We've only got the one song that's close to being done and...five or six songs that I'd say are close. We want to get this record out as soon as possible, so we work at it, but at the same time you don't want to put out something that's not great. So we spend plenty of time trying to get it right, and...maybe our senses are a little more fine-tuned, so we tend to nitpick."

Noodles says that frontman Bryan "Dexter" Holland has made some trips to Hawaii to work on songs with producer Bob Rock, who also helmed "Rise and Fall...," while the group has also worked on material at Holland's studio near the Offspring's home base of Huntington Beach, Calif. "Until we get it done you never know, but all these songs so far sound like Offspring songs to me," he says. "Some are a little bit more fast and furious, and then some are a little more mellow. The new one is pretty much a straightforward rock song; I guess it would be similar to 'The Kids Aren't Alright' or 'You're Gonna Go Far, Kid.' "

Noodles expects the Offspring to get back to work in earnest on the album at the end of the Unity Tour, which starts tonight (June 23) in Vancouver and wraps with a pair of Summer Sonic festival dates in Japan. Meanwhile, the guitarist says the band is looking forward to being on the road with 311 -- and to the challenge it represents.

"311 is a great band," Noodles notes, "and a little different than us. When the idea was posed we thought it sounded like a good fit. More and more as we go out and travel all over the world and play with different bands, you get inspired in a lot of ways that you wouldn't otherwise. I think our fans will really like them, and we hope their fans will like us."