diff --git a/beets/importer.py b/beets/importer.py
index 4e4084eec..889f1297e 100644
--- a/beets/importer.py
+++ b/beets/importer.py
@@ -1059,9 +1059,9 @@ class ArchiveImportTask(SentinelImportTask):
             if path_test(util.py3_path(self.toppath)):
                 break
 
+        extract_to = mkdtemp()
+        archive = handler_class(util.py3_path(self.toppath), mode='r')
         try:
-            extract_to = mkdtemp()
-            archive = handler_class(util.py3_path(self.toppath), mode='r')
             archive.extractall(extract_to)
         finally:
             archive.close()
diff --git a/docs/changelog.rst b/docs/changelog.rst
index b0e7a6cab..2d456ae88 100644
--- a/docs/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/changelog.rst
@@ -86,6 +86,8 @@ Fixes:
 * Fix a problem when resizing images with PIL/Pillow on Python 3.
   Thanks to :user:`architek`.
   :bug:`2504` :bug:`3029`
+* Avoid a crash when archive extraction fails during import.
+  :bug:`3041`
 
 .. _python-itunes: https://github.com/ocelma/python-itunes