Baggy jeans, layered t-shirts, and shaggy hair: these are all original characteristics of 90’s garage band musicians. As music has continued to develop and change throughout the past two decades, the creation of rock and alternative bands among teenage boys has remained constant. Suncrest, a local band created by four musicians—Dexter Day, the lead singer, Will Schweiker, the guitarist, Matt Lauber, the drummer, and Joaquin Garcia Hacek, the bassist—has continued to rise in popularity after their Battle of the Bands debut in January of 2025.
Having known each other since 2022, Day, Schweiker, Lauber, and Hacek all met at the School of Rock, a community hub for musical education. However, when they decided to form a band, they struggled to come up with a name, and turned to an online website to assist them. Day, a senior at Woodgrove, explained, “We couldn’t come up with anything else, so we just did a random band name generator, and that’s just generally how it happened.”
While each bandmate joined Suncrest for different reasons, Schweiker, a junior at Loudoun County High School, joined for a chance to express his creativity in producing new song materials and guitar riffs. Schweiker expressed, “I just figured out I could write my own material and be creative enough. So, I thought being in a band would be a cool idea to show off all my riffs and all my creations.”
With a total of roughly 12 songs, Suncrest has 3 of them posted on Spotify: Latin, Stargirl, and Ambedo. When coming up with song ideas, the group typically has a “go with the flow” method, which includes bouncing different ideas and tunes off of each other. “Dexter and I come up with an idea, melody, or riff, and we just send it in the group chat,” Schweiker explained. “We take a video, send a group chat, and then we practice it and ask our drummer and bassist just to play along at a practice, and then we just form it.”
However, the creation of their song is not the final step in the music making process. In order to get their song uploaded to Spotify, the group has to record it at Blue Room Productions, a process that can sometimes take up to 10 hours. Schweiker stated, “It takes awhile to actually get the songs good enough to be able to post it.” After creating a recording of the song that they are satisfied with, the band then goes through a final process to perfect aspects of the music, like volume. Day elaborated, “Once you kind of have it all recorded, then you need to go through a mastering process where pretty much you have to make sure that the loudness and all that stuff is good for all of these streaming services.”
When Suncrest was first trying to gain popularity and get their name out there, the band decided to try Battle of the Bands. Day explained, “I feel like Battle of the Bands is kind of our way of trying to get our name out there, because a venue is not gonna want to book this random band of kids they don’t know.” Now, Suncrest has competed in multiple Battle of the Bands, earning them recognition and gigs at local organizations. At each of their shows, the band sings both their own original songs and a few cover songs, such as Eternal Life by Jeff Buckley.
Mounira Nabassa, a junior at Woodgrove, attended one of the band’s shows as a volunteer. While watching their show, one of the main things that Nabassa noticed was the band’s onstage chemistry. She stated, “Especially Dexter, he’s really good at commanding the stage.”
As the older bandmates Day and Schweiker begin to prepare for college, they hope that the band will continue to be a creative outlet for them. Although neither of them plan to major in music, they plan to still try and incorporate music into their life as a side interest or hobby. With their new song Ambedo just released on Spotify February 13, 2026, be sure to be on the lookout for new hits and tunes by Suncrest.