Brian Buzby, John Crusoe, Chad Bennet, Matthew Davis and Paul Sanders of Saunter are all college graduates, a lot of musicians hardly make a dent into a high-school education.

Saunter is a five-piece band whose sound and style is self-described as “southern indie rock.” Saunter’s sound is unique because it not only involves typical instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums, but also has a saxophone and keys.

Saunter’s mailing address may be in Chapel Hill, but claim they “call the Triangle home.” You might have heard the Saunter name mentioned before or possibly even heard their music on WKNC 88.1, 96ROCK or possibly even Mix 101.5, or maybe you saw them play at a frat house on a weekend excursions to UNC-Chapel Hill. Simply put, Saunter is a local band everyone needs to know about.

Saunter might be one of the most diversely educated bands around. The members’ alma maters include N.C. State, UNC-Chapel Hill, Ithaca College, ECU and Radford University.

At first glance, Saunter has a few things working against them — they’re not young, they are unsigned, they don’t play music full-time and three out of the five members are married. Those might be serious dilemmas for another band, but Saunter makes it work and work well.

Saunter’s musical style is hard to pinpoint, so they definitely don’t fit nicely into any genre. Basically, Saunter is a melodious mixture of O.A.R., Phish, Dave Matthews Band with influences from classic rock. But they are definitely not that lame college jam band that you’ve seen a thousand times and whose repertoire consists of poorly executed covers; Saunter is original.

Davis describes the band’s sound as “not technical but extreme,” with Sanders saying that Saunter’s music is “more to the point” than most of what’s out there in the indie music scene.

Saunter doesn’t consider itself a jam band, but do respect the genre.

“I always gravitated towards the jam scene just because they were focused on the music — [but now it seems that] everybody is jumping on the jam bandwagon,” Davis said.

No band likes to be labeled, and there truly is no particular genre that Saunter fits into; but it can be said that they rest somewhere securely in between rock and jam band.

“We definitely have moments where we can be somewhat hard,” Sanders said until he was interrupted by Davis, “but it sounds like cheesy Kenny Loggins kind of hard.”

It is hard to believe that a band like Saunter actually has something in common with Destiny’s Child.

Both have seen their share of members. It actually took Davis and Sanders a minute or two to tally them all up, but the current count is 10 members that were once in the band and are no longer.

“Some people moved on, there was one with creative differences,” Davis said.

When asked about personal differences, Davis laughingly replied, “That too, but that was a long time ago,” Davis said. “The Saunter brand started in 1999, and I guess this current incarnation started in 2004.”

Saunter’s songs, like all good songs, are very easy to relate to.

Davis and Sanders insisted that their songs are “not just about sex,” but it certainly can’t be denied that sex is a major topic. Davis urges that there is a “deeper meaning” to the songs than to what they are about on the surface.

It can be said that every band’s lyrics are poetic, but Saunter’s lyrics seem more so. This is mostly because Davis, the band’s main songwriter, says he has challenges “writing a song with a repetitive chorus.”

Davis’ songwriting maintains cohesiveness without using the template of typical songwriting and is fun to listen to because Davis claims that the songs are mostly focused on “growing up but still having that child-like mentality.”

This explains why Davis has “heard folks that are [his] parents’ age enjoy the music and a 10-year-old kid [too].”

Saunter has proven themselves with staying power and well-crafted music.

Saunter is, “a grandfather of the local music scene because we’ve seen so many bands come and go, and somehow we’re still at the same freaking spot as we were like six years ago,” Davis said.

“But we’re still kicking,” Sanders said.

Saunter released their second full-length album “Excuses” Jan. 14 at the Lincoln Theatre to a sold-out crowd. Check them out at www.sauntermusic.com.