Index usage stats DMV indicates no index activity
One possibility would be that you don't have sufficient permissions to view the metadata. 

Another is that sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats only reports on indexes that have been used at least once since the server was last restarted. Also 


  whenever a database is detached or is shut down (for example, because
  AUTO_CLOSE is set to ON), all rows associated with the database are
  removed.


AUTO_CLOSE is the default for SQL Server Express.

You need to filter sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats by database_id to determine if it has metadata loaded for a particular database also the join should include index_id

SELECT *
FROM   sys.indexes i
       LEFT JOIN sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats s
         ON i.object_id = s.object_id
            AND i.index_id = s.index_id
            AND s.database_id = DB_ID()