Is Descriptive Complexity dead?
I also have the impression that Descriptive Complexity is a less active area of research nowadays. Nevertheless, there are some topics in which people are still active:

Rank logics:


Rank Logic is Dead, Long Live Rank Logic! by Grädel and Pakusa
Symmetric Circuits for Rank Logic by Dawar and Wilsenach
Separating Rank Logic from Polynomial Time
by Lichter


Choiceless Polynomial Time:


Canonization for Bounded and Dihedral Color Classes in Choiceless Polynomial Time by Lichter and Schweitzer
Choiceless Logarithmic Space by Grädel and Schalthöfer


Dynamic Complexity:


Dynamic Complexity of Parity Exists Queries by Vortmeier and Zeume
Reachability Is in DynFO by Datta, Kulkarni, Mukherjee, Schwentick and Zeume
PHD thesis of Thomas Zeume


Other interesting things:


Descriptive Complexity for Counting Complexity Classes by Arenas Muñoz and Riveros
Descriptive complexity of real computation and probabilistic independence logic by Hannula, Kontinen, Van den Bussche and Virtema
Descriptive Complexity of Deterministic Polylogarithmic Time by Ferrarotti et al
On the Power of Symmetric Linear Programs by Atserias, Dawar and Ochremiak
Traversal-invariant characterizations of logarithmic space by Bhaskar, Lindell and Weinstein

The list is not supposed to be complete. Just giving you a glimpse on what kind of problems are people looking at.