The Story
Our Song
Lachlan Maluhia McQuivey left this life on June 7, 2025, just days after he turned 18. Everybody on the BYU-Hawai’i campus where we were all attending school was devastated to hear of his loss. As some of his closest friends, we found comfort in the one thing we all shared with Lachlan — a love of music.
That week we wrote a song, Today I Lost A Friend. The day of Lachlan’s La’ie memorial service we invited his family to the studio to hear our song for the first time. It was a special, tear-filled event. The family loved our song and encouraged us to release it so the whole world could share. You can hear the song, released by one of us under his producer name, Chaagii, on Spotify below. Or search for it on Apple Music or wherever you get your favorite tracks.
The song soon spread around the world. Thousands of people listened in over a dozen countries. Carried by word of mouth and divine assistance, the song reached people one by one with its message of love and loss. We hope you feel love and meaning when you hear the song that we put our hearts into.
Our name
We didn’t have a name for our band when we released our song. But when we were invited to perform at a benefit concert in LA we realized we needed one. We thought hard on this one — we wanted to use Lachlan’s middle name, Maluhia, since it means “peace” in Hawaiian. But that was hard for people to say or spell. We thought of so many of our favorite things about our friend and finally landed on “Ranga” — an Aussie and Kiwi slang term for red-head, like we say Ginger elsewhere. Lachlan had magnificent red hair and leaned into his Scotch-Irish ancestry just as much as he did his Hawaiian roots. But what really sticks with us is how much Lachlan loved orangutans — his classic prank was sneaking onto your phone or laptop and changing the wallpaper to a hideous orangutan picture, then sitting back with that mischievous grin, waiting for your reaction.
So like that The Rangas was born.
“Look at her…so beautiful, so intelligent” – Lachlan
All of Lachlan’s friends agree: we’ve all had to sit through this video at least once — his most prized gem on the internet.
Who We Are…
Of all those invited, six of us went to Hollywood to perform live for the Promise2Live Global Livestream Event:
Gianna Maile Hohaia
Vocals • Songwriter
Evan Rutherford
Vocals • Guitar
Sophia (SES) Sagarese
Vocals • Songwriter
Charlie Bawden
Producer • Songwriter • Piano • Vocals
genevieve Kale’a Hohaia
Guitar • Ukelele
Joshua Lundin
Violin • Vocals
And more of us were in the studio that week:
liezl (Liz) Guillen
Violin
Michael Gardner
Vocals
Promise2Live Concert
On September 10, 2025, The Rangas performed as part of a benefit concert for suicide prevention. The concert was hosted by Promise2Live, a nonprofit that has assembled celebrities and talent to gather on Global Suicide Prevention Day to honor those we’ve lost and work to prevent the loss of any more people we love.
We were honored to be on the classic stage in The Avalon Theater in Hollywood where we sang our song for a potential audience of millions. We are so grateful to Brandy Vega, Founder of Good Deed Revolution and creator of Promise2Live, for inviting us to this special event and being so warm and loving. Learn more about Promise2Live and how you can protect and support the people closest to you who need it.
Promise2Live.org
September 10, 2025
Bonus Track!
Here’s the backstory on our glorious logo. As you saw, our name comes from Ranga, a slang term for red-head that conveniently connects to Lachlan’s favorite animal, the Orangutan (see above YouTube video for 10 hours of enjoyment in this vein). When we were first in the studio listening to our song with Lachlan’s family, Lachlan’s brother used the sound-dampening walls of the studio space — which you can see above are velvet-like — to draw a simple Orangutan icon.
He was like a gentle overseer of our project. We also wrote some things on the walls to inspire us.
We embraced the ape, or the Ranga, and made him our mascot and icon. We hope you love him as much as we do.
Extra bonus lore
It’s classically Polynesian to look for layers of meaning in words, songs, dances, and in the world around us. Hawaiian, for example, only has 13 letters of the alphabet so there are only so many sounds you can make in the language; as a result, each combination of sounds has to mean multiple things. This creates great opportunities for poetry. This is also true throughout Polynesia. Our band members are of various ethnicities, all of them wonderful — several of us are of multiple Polynesian descent, including Maori, the name for the people of New Zealand, close cousins to the Hawaiians. So you can imagine the chicken skin we got (local term for “goose bumps”) when we looked up Ranga in a Maori dictionary:
Yeah, another reason why we love our name. You’re welcome.
Meet The Rangas 