Grant McLennan, 48, singer and founder of Go-Betweens

LOS ANGELES -- Grant McLennan, a founder of the literate and bittersweet band the Go-Betweens, which had lately experienced one of pop music's rare Indian summers, died Saturday at his home in Brisbane, Australia. He was 48.

While there's not yet an official cause of death, friends speculate a heart attack was responsible. Robert Vickers, the band's former bassist, says Mr. McLennan went to lie down while setting up for a party. ''When people started to arrive, they went to wake him up, and they couldn't wake him up," he said.

The Go-Betweens, described by the All Music Guide as ''the quintessential cult band of the '80s," released six albums during its initial run, including ''16 Lovers Lane." The group had modest hits with the songs ''Spring Rain" and ''Streets of Your Town," acclaim from critics, kind words from U2, and a spot opening for R.E.M. before breaking up at the end of 1989.

Mr. McLennan, the cherubic, easygoing member of the band -- which also included Robert Forster -- made several country-influenced solo records afterward.

''Grant McLennan's songs have a wistfulness that always reminds me of afternoon sunlight," Los Angeles Times pop music critic Ann Powers said yesterday. ''His melodic sense and inherent sweetness perfectly complements Robert Forster's edginess in the Go-Betweens."

Upon their reunion in 2000, Mr. McLennan, a guitarist, and Forster reached a new generation and made some of the most celebrated music of their careers. Their first reunion album, ''The Friends of Rachel Worth," saw the two backed by the Pacific Northwest band Sleater-Kinney, and Scotland's Belle and Sebastian wrote a song about their love for the group.

''We very much regard ourselves as a pop band, maybe even a folk-pop band," Mr. McLellan told The Boston Globe before a concert appearance at the Roxy in 2000. ''The kind of pop I'm thinking of is Bob Dylan's 'I Want You.' It's got to have a little bit of danger, a sense of abandonment, or be slightly off-center."

Yesterday, the Go-Betweens' website had posted tributes from indie rock's royalty, including several members of Teenage Fanclub, Orange Juice founder Edwyn Collins, and Superchunk's Mac McCaughan. ''It's great when you meet one of your heroes," McCaughan wrote, ''and they turn out to be friendly and gracious and as special as you would hope they'd be."

Mr. McLennan was born in Rockhampton, Australia. He was 4 when his father died, and he spent several years at a boarding school in Brisbane before his mother remarried and the family resettled in a rural area.

Mr. McLennan met Forster in a theater course at the University of Brisbane. ''I noticed this tall fellow carrying a Talking Heads record, '77,' " Mr. McLennan told the Times last year. ''I didn't think anybody else in Australia was listening to it. It was great to meet someone you felt wasn't going to beat you up, and who was as bad an actor as you were."

United by an interest in New York punk and Dylan, the two worked at a record store together and recorded what would become the band's first single, ''Lee Remick," at a jingle studio.

Mr. McLennan, who was also a fan of French New Wave cinema and the American short story, later described his style as a ''wistful, nostalgic, memory-driven, melodic McCartney-esque sort of thing."

Vickers recalls him as someone who kept a distance from the world's pressures. ''He lived in a rented house, he didn't drive, didn't wear a watch, didn't carry a wallet. He wasn't a real material person: His wardrobe had like five things in it, and he'd wear them whether it was snowing or sunny."

Besides working at a university cinema and a record store, Mr. McLennan probably never held a straight job.

But this bohemianism exacted its costs, said Vickers, adding that Mr. McLennan was overly fond of discussing books and movies all day over beer and cigarettes. ''He didn't change his lifestyle when he got into his 40s, like a lot of us do. I wish he'd done a bit more of that."

Mr. McLennan's musical passions included the Mamas and the Papas, Television, and the Creedence Clearwater Revival. ''He loved pop songs," Vickers said, ''but he also loved the poets -- Dylan and Patti Smith. That's what he was going for, a poetic song that would stick in your head."

Forster said the group would not continue.