Hugo Kornelis continues a series on SQL Server plan operators:
The Key Lookup operator provides a subset of the functionality of the Clustered Index Seek operator, but within a specific context. It is used when another operator (usually an Index Seek, sometimes an Index Scan, rarely a combination of two or more of these or other operators) is used to find rows that need to be processed, but the index used does not include all columns needed for the query. The Key Lookup operator is then used to fetch the remaining columns from the clustered index.
A Key Lookup operator will always be found on the inner input of a Nested Loops operator. It will be executed once for each row found. Since the key values passed in always come from another index, the requested row will always exist (except in rare race scenarios when read uncommitted isolation level is used).
Click through for a great deal of information on key lookups.