Briefly: Dixie Chicks, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sting, Siren Festival

With about 271,000 copies sold, the Dixie Chicks ' "Taking the Long Way" easily outsold the competition and will spend its second straight week atop The Billboard 200 album chart.

Holding steady at No. 2 on the chart is the "High School Musical" soundtrack, while The Red Hot Chili Peppers ' "Stadium Arcadium" moves up two rungs to No. 3, according to Billboard.

Rascal Flatts' "Me and My Gang" rises two notches to No. 4, and the "American Idol Season 5: Encores" claims the No. 5 spot.

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Sting has set an Oct. 10 release date for a new album dubbed "Songs from the Labyrinth," a set that ventures far astray from his pop/rock past: it features Sting's interpretations of the music of Elizabethan songwriter John Dowland (1563-1626). Joining Sting on the album is lutenist Edin Karamazov.

Said Sting, in a press release: "About two years ago my long-time guitarist, Dominic Miller, gave me a gift that he'd had made for me, a lute--a sixteenth-century instrument with lots of strings. I became fascinated with it and immersed myself in lute music. It rekindled an interest I've had for a long time in the works of John Dowland, who wrote a number of fantastic lute songs. Dowland was really the first English singer/songwriter that we know of and so many of us owe our living to this man."

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The lineup for the 6th Annual Village Voice Siren Music festival, set for July 15 at New York's Coney Island, will include Scissor Sisters , The Stills , Tapes 'N Tapes, She Wants Revenge, Stars and Art Brut.

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