Keane was born in a small village called Sylane (near Tuam) in rural County Galway in the west of Ireland.

[1] In 1975, she co-founded the traditional Irish band De Dannan,[2] and they released their debut album Dé Danann in that same year.

In early 1976, after a short two-year spell, Keane left De Dannan and was replaced by Andy Irvine, who recorded live with the band on 30 April 1976, during the Third Irish Folk Festival in Germany.

[citation needed] Keane lived and worked in London for several years with Faulkner, before they moved to Ireland in the early 1980s.

They worked on a series of film scores and programmes for the BBC and formed two successful bands, The Reel Union and Kinvara.

A new facet was added to Dolores' career when she played the female lead in the Dublin production of Brendan Behan's The Hostage, a new translation by Niall Tóibín and Michael Scott, the opening night of which was attended by Mary Robinson, the President of Ireland at the time.

Dolores contributed to the RTÉ/BBC television production Bringing It All Back Home (1991), a series of programmes illustrating the movement of Irish music to America.

[2] Keane was shown performing both in Nashville, Tennessee with musicians such as Emmylou Harris and Richard Thompson,[2] and at home in Galway with her aunts Rita and Sarah.

Despite a healthy solo career, Keane went on tour with De Dannan again in the late 1990s, where she played to packed audiences in venues such as Birmingham, Alabama and New York City.