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.